


December 25th

by zeitgeist21st



Series: The Phantoms [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Attempted Murder, Blood, Blood Blossoms, Child Abuse, Christmas, Murder, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 19:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeist21st/pseuds/zeitgeist21st
Summary: After fourteen years of wandering in space, Vlad Plasmius returns to Earth to seek revenge on the Fenton family.





	1. Cold and Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on FanFoction on December 25th, 2011

It was cold, it was dark, it was empty, it was lonely. But then again, when isn't it always this way? He thought he would adjust to it eventually, as he was equally as cold and dark, and it would help him forget everything that had happened to him all those years ago. Years? Has it been years already? In all of his exile, the only thing he has forgotten was the time. Perhaps it has been years, maybe centuries even. Or maybe it has only been days and the dark emptiness dragged out the seconds as if they were years.

He didn't care much anymore, all he cared about was that he had been wronged. From the first day he was gifted with these powers, everything else had been taken away from him. When he tried to better himself, when he tried to get back what he thought he had lost, it just became more things to take away. No, it wasn't when he was given his powers, it was long before that. During this whole time in deep space, he kept looking back into his past. All his pain, all his misery, all his loneliness and heartbreak, could be tracked down to one day. It was the day he met that cumbersome oaf he once had the displeasure of calling friend. Since then all his chances at happiness were dashed. He lost the love of his life and was exiled for years in a hospital all because that big idiot wouldn't bother seeing what he was doing. Then he had children, they too would set out to ruin his life. He had made something of himself, he was finally worth the love of his soul mate and to do the world a favor by putting one fat lummox out of his misery. He had the title, he had the wealth, he had the power in more ways than one. All he needed was a family. He thought he would start one with his love, once he got her husband out of the way. Imagine his surprise, imagine his joy, when he found out that her son was gifted just like him. Someone he could relate to with being different (and in his opinion, superior) to everyone else. Someone he could pass down all of his knowledge and skills. In her son he saw the son he never got to have.

But the boy was much too much like his idiot father. He refused to stand by his side. He instead called him insane to even suggest such a notion. No, he did not call him insane, he called him a "seriously crazed up fruitloop", a little worse than being called insane. He opposed him and became an enemy, set out the foil all plans that would lead him to his happiness. Despite this, he still offered his fatherly affection and guidance throughout their confrontations. The boy refused him every time and set out to humiliate him. Every time. He wanted to give up and take the boy out, but he still wanted a child with his gift. His hopes in such a child were dashed when his child, the child he made from the boy’s own genetic structure, had turned against him as well.

He then forfeited making himself happy and thus plotted to make the boy and his family suffer. He had gained power and greater advantages ahead of the boy. He had the whole world, the whole planet Earth in his hands! He was _so close_ to success he could almost taste it.

But then he failed.

His only consolation was the fact that he would be the only person alive. And in his books, being alive made you much happier than being dead.

And so he wandered the depths of space, looking at nothing but the dark and cold, with nothing but his thoughts to comfort him. He spent all this time contemplating all the wrongs in his life. The cold made his ectoplasm want to warm itself with hatred, the black emptiness wanted do illuminate the air red with rage. Instead of the loneliness making him better, it only made him worse. His only regret in his part of the Earth's destruction was that it wasn't direct enough for him to see that moron of a man and his son die. They were gone, and he didn't bother to enjoy it.

After a time unmeasured by him, he soon found his path was about to cross the empty space the Earth had once stood. He was tormented by the thought of seeing the rubble that once was his home and mused by the thought of whether or not it had formed its own asteroid belt by now or just added rocks to the original one. He made his way past Jupiter and the asteroid belt and then there, on the other side of Mars, past its two moons, there stood the Earth. It was untouched, intact, the way he remembered it. Its orbit was littered with satellites and space stations, ships flying back and forth between the atmosphere and the Earths surface.

He should have been happy, the planet that he was born in, the planet that he was raised in, the planet that made him who he was and one of the only worlds he knew was alive and intact. He should have been ashamed. The planet had nearly been destroyed because of him. He should of felt these emotions, but he didn't. All he felt was rage. He knew immediately that it was the boy’s doing, that he had save the world and defamed him in the process. They must have rewarded him, made him a hero, while he had to hide in the depths of space and live infamously in the history books as the man who nearly destroyed the world. His father may have taken the love of his life but the boy did much worse, he took his reputation.

His ectoplasm boiled against the cold emptiness, the black depths were crimson in his rage. He wanted retribution for all that was taken from him. He wanted revenge for his infamy. And he knew that it could only be paid in blood, and a little ectoplasm, under a specific name: Fenton.

 


	2. Santa, No Santa

The snow fell without clouds. It looked like the very stars were falling out of the sky and fluttering softly onto the ground. Danny and Sam walked the three blocks from their house to the house of Jack and Maddie Fenton. Danny carried the various presents they had made and bought for their family. Sam held the more precious cargo: their only child. Little green eyes sparkled like emeralds in fascination as little pink lips breathed out white vapor.

"Daddy," said the owner of the lips and eyes, "how come I can see my breath if there isn't a ghost anywhere?"

Danny and Sam laughed at this, adoring their daughter's innocent curiosity. Danny moved his head in order to get a glimpse of the little girl through the many packages.

"Well sweetie, remember when I told you about vapor and condensation?"

She nodded her head, a few strands of raven hair shook out from under her hat.

"Well because your breath is warmer than the air outside, the moisture becomes a vapor you can see."

The little girl contemplated this new fact.

"Does that mean when I sense a ghost, my breath becomes colder than the air or does the ghost make the air colder?"

Sam and Danny looked at each other perplexed, they never thought of that before.

"How about we save that question for Grandma and Grandpa Fenton, sweetie." Danny concluded.

"Okay Daddy." she smiled, brightening the air with her ethereal glow.

"Maybe they'll be so obsessed with the question that they'll forget about the Fight." Sam added amusingly.

Danny smirked as he recollected many a Christmas he had spent with his parents constantly fighting over the existence of Santa Clause. He had hated it as a child, but he has come to accept it as a Christmas tradition as he got older. It soon became something he easily ignored, and it helped that they started doing it a little less once their grandchild were born.

They arrived at the door of his childhood home. The little girl’s hands reached out from her mother’s arms to ring the doorbell. When she found she couldn’t quite reach it, Sam leaned over so the little white fingers could press the button through the thick green mittens. Immediately the door was opened with Jack and Maddie on the other side.

"Danny, Sam," greeted the two older ghost hunters, "Merry Christmas."

"Grandma, Grandpa!" cried their excited granddaughter as she reached out to hug them. She phased through her mother’s arms and clung to Jack and Maddie in the middle of the air.

"Hey there, little Ophelia," replied Maddie in the middle of the embrace.

"Hey there Wispy," replied Jack as she floated back down. He ruffled her head, causing her hat to fall off and her long black hair to fall past her shoulders. "How’s it been?"

"Good, we had this holiday party in preschool and I got a new dress from Grandma Manson for the sixth night of Hanukah. Is Aunt Jazz here yet?"

"Sorry sweetie," answered Maddie "but she won't be here until tomorrow."

"Neither will Valerie, Tucker, or Francis." added in Jack.

"And Dani isn't coming until tomorrow neither." Ophelia concluded with a gleeful smile, "That means we have you all to ourselves."

They smiled back. They all soon entered the house and warm themselves by the fireplace and tree. Danny dumped his heavy load by the tree. As he and Sam arranged them, Ophelia's eyes glittered with the shiny wrapping paper of the mountain of gifts, as any child's would.

"Make sure to leave enough room under the tree for Santa." Jack said to them.

Danny and Sam rolled their eyes as they saw Maddie gear up for their annual quarrel. Ophelia, having spent only three half-remembered Christmases at the Fenton house, was completely oblivious to it.

"You mean you should save room for the presents the others will bring." Maddie said.

"Others including Santa."

"How many times do I have to tell you, he _does not_ exist!"

"And how many times do I have to tell _you_ , he _does_!"

"What proof do you have that he does exist?"

"What proof do you have that he doesn't?"

"Jack, there are about two billion children around the world. How is a man of his physique and age suppose to deliver presents for every child in one night?"

"Not all children celebrate Christmas, so you can cut that down to about 500 million children. Then there are the children who have been bad and don't get presents, then there are only 300 million. And then there are the differing time zones, so one night can stretch out to about a day and a half."

Sam leaned into her husband.

"I always thought it was interesting how your dad can be so bad at statistics and approximations for every month of the year except December."

Danny smiled.

"Yeah, well he's had a lot of years and determination to crunch the numbers."

"Still, that is near impossible Jack. He would still to drive at incredibly fast speeds to get it all done in that window of time. He'd burn up from the friction. And how would he acquire flying reindeer and a sleigh in the first place?"

"Magic reindeer, magic sleigh. He got them when he got the magic that makes him live for so long."

"Do you realize how childish you sound right now?"

Ophelia was enmeshed in their argument when she realized she had heard this before and remembered how they took up most of last year's Christmas Eve over the same argument to no end. She then decided to change the subject.

"Grandma, Grandpa?" she said to interrupt their argument.

"Yes Ophelia?" they both answered.

"Outside in the snow I saw my breath and there wasn't a ghost a round. Daddy said it was because my breath was warmer then the air and made vapor. I asked how we can see our breath when a ghost is around and Daddy said to ask you. So I’m asking you: how can I see my breath when a ghost is around if it’s not cold?”

The two ghost hunters looked at each other. Strange how they never wondered about that before. Curious, they decided to go down to the their lab in the basement to find out for themselves.  
When they asked Danny to come down for a few samples, Ophelia and Sam were left alone upstairs. Sam held her daughter as she sat on her lap.

"Mommy, why doesn't Santa give presents to kids who don't celebrate Christmas?"

Sam smiled while trying to come up with a good answer.

"Because some winter holidays don't involve exchanging gifts, and it would be weird if Father Christmas squeezed through your chimney and gave you a doll."

"But we exchange gifts for Hanukah, why doesn't he do it for us?"

"Because it's tough for him to do this stuff in one night, imagine trying to give presents to two billion children in the world for eight nights. And that's if he's lucky enough for the two holidays to fall into the same days."

"And Santa can't split himself like Daddy can?"

"No, Santa is not a ghost, or at least not that we know of. Either way, he can’t split himself."

"Oh, then if he's real he really deserves all those milk and cookies."

Sam looked at his daughter curiously.

"Do you think Santa is real?"

Ophelia looked up at her mother with a confused expression.

“Isn’t he in the box, Mommy?”

“What box?”

"There was this teacher in one of Aunt Jazz's universities talking about a guy who put his cat in this box."

"Schrödinger's Cat?"

"Mm-Hm, it said that since nobody opened the box the cat was both dead and alive at the same time. If the box can make the cat alive and dead at the same time, then maybe it makes Santa real and not real when he’s in there.  Is that true, Mommy?"

Sam smiled and held her daughter tighter. She kissed Ophelia on the forehead.

"Yes, yes it is."

The three Fentons finally returned to the living room from their little escapade. Maddie was removing her trademark suit cap and goggles, wiping away the well-earned sweat from her brow.

"We're back," She announced, "And we found out how the ghost sense works. When you sense a ghost, your ice core releases a small amount of cryokinetic energy that lowers your body temperature. This somehow alters the amount of humidity you release in your breath. So when you release a breath of air while sensing a ghost, the cold moisture of your breath mixed with the warmer air of your surroundings results in the blue wisp of vapor."

Ophelia blinked her glittering eyes in the kind of awe only a child as young as her could have.

"Cooooool" she said in that same awe.

"Jack, Maddie," Sam addressed, " you should hear Ophelia's theory about Santa. It's quite interesting."

They perked up at the words.

"And what would that be?" Maddie asked skeptically.

"She says that Santa Clause is a Schrödinger’s Cat. Because we don't have anything to prove or disprove his existence, he's still in the box."

Both Maddie and Jack were taken back at the though of their four year old granddaughter not only knowing but understanding a concept like Schrödinger's Cat.

"How does she know about Schrödinger's Cat?" Jack asked, "That's an analogy for quantum physics."

"She overheard a lecture when she was in one of Jazz's university. I think it is a great compromise for this annual argument. Because neither of us can prove or disprove that Santa is real, he is both real and not real. So you guys can both agree with each other and disagree with each other, or at least agree to disagree."

Danny looked at Sam and Ophelia and then at his parents.

"We couldn't have this big epiphany moment back when I was a kid?"

* * *

 

 After they had their dinner, Danny and Sam decided to let Ophelia open one present tonight for being a good little girl and the only child in the house.

“I know just the gift.” Maddie declared and she ran downstairs to the basement. After a few minutes, she came back up with a little blue box tied up in black ribbon, the same color as her trademark hazmat suit. She handed the box to Ophelia, who looked at them with big curious eyes. She held the box to her ear as she shook it. She smiled gleefully, as if she already knew what it was.

“Go on, sweetie,” Maddie encouraged. “Open it.”

With small hesitance, Ophelia tugged on the black ribbon until it fell from the box. She opened the lid and took out its contents. It was a pair of hazmat goggles with red lenses.

“I wanted her to have a little bit of Grandma Fenton she can carry around,” Maddie said to Danny and Sam, “and I thought a locket or doll just wasn’t enough of me for her. She used to love to try to grab these off my head when she was a baby, so I can’t think of a better gift.”

Ophelia inspected the goggles and looked through the red lenses. Sam looked down at the girl sitting in her lap and then up at Maddie.

“Are you sure about this? These are your favorite goggles, I have never seen you without them in my life.”

“Nor have I.” Danny added

“She’s very small, and runs around a lot. She might break them.”

“Nonsense,” Maddie said as she noticed that Ophelia was having a hard time putting them on. She took them out of her hands and adjusted the straps. “These are made to protect the wearer from exposure to the harshest ghostly energy. It can withstand ghost attacks, paranormal experiments, and most of all any invention Jack can cook up.”

The three adults giggled at his expense.

“Hey” he protested jovially.

Maddie ignored him and drew her attention back to Ophelia.

“Now Ophelia, I’ve had these goggles ever since I studied paranormal sciences in Wisconsin University. I wore them when I met your grandfather and on my wedding day. I wore them even when your aunt and your father were born. They were with me when I made my biggest scientific breakthroughs. Now I’m giving them to you, in hopes that you will have as much success with them as I have.”

She put the goggles on. They were much bigger than her, covering ­­half her face. She only blinked twice through the red lenses before they fell off her face and dangled from her neck. Danny and Sam both laughed.

“Maybe when she grows into them,” Sam said. She looked down at Ophelia. “What do you say, honey? ”

“Thank you, Grandma Maddie.” Ophelia said in a sweet yet rehearsed tone, as all children her age had. 

* * *

 

Games were played and stories were told. Eventually Ophelia’s eyes drooped and she started to fall asleep on the couch.

“Time to put her to bed.” Sam announced as she picked up the small child and carried her to the stairs.

The three Fentons said their goodnights and looked on as Ophelia drowsily waved back before she and Sam disappeared up the staircase.

"It's hard to believe she exists," Jack said "it seems like only yesterday that you and Jazz were that small. Now look at you: full grown, fully responsible adult with a kid of your own."

Danny smiled, his eyes still glued to the top step.

"Yeah, I bet you never pictured me growing up to be like this way back when."

"Honestly, I doubt anyone would picture their children receiving superhuman powers under their roof and become the savior of two worlds." Maddie joked.

"But parents do dream to have a child like Ophelia, you and Sam are truly blessed to have her."

"Yeah, yeah we are."

Just then, a knock came on the door. Sensing no ghostly threat, Danny answered it. Tucker was with another man dressed in the fashion of a government agent. Both men looked nervous, Tucker more than the other man.

"Hey Tuck, what's wrong?"

"Where's Sam? We need to get going now."

"Tucker what's wrong? What's going on?"

"Remember that surveillance equipment your station put into the satellites last month? Well, it picked up something heading to Earth.”

"What like some meteorites or something?"

"Worse, it had a human heat signature and an ectoplasmic signature."

All the blood drained out of Danny’s face.

"Sam? Sam! We have to get going, now! Mom, Dad, can you watch over Ophelia until we get back?"

"Sure son, but what's the matter?" asked Jack.

Danny hardly heard his father calling him. Instead of answering, he went straight to the rack by the door and hastily put on his coat and scarf.

"Fourteen years,” he absentmindedly rambled to himself, “Fourteen years and he decides _now_ to show his ugly face again? Sam!"

"Okay, okay, Danny I'm here." Sam said as she rushed down the stairs. "If you keep yelling, you'll wake Ophelia up. Hey Tucker-”

She was cut off when Danny threw her coat at her.

“Come on, Sam, we have to get going. There’s no time to lose, he could be anywhere right now.”

Sam pulled the coat off her head, showing the deep concern on her face. She placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder, getting him to stop for a moment and look at her.

“Danny, what's wrong? Calm down and tell me what's going on."

There in Danny’s eyes she saw something she hadn’t seen in a long time. That fear, worry and determination she had only seen back when they were in high school, when he had his arch-nemesis threatening his life.

"He's back Sam, Vlad Plasmius is back."

 


	3. Search

Tucker led them to place Vlad was last sighted, the old mansion he had stowed away in the Colorado Rockies. It did not take long with the help of the Spector Speeder. A team of federal agents met them with camps set up around the house to organize their investigation team. They had ecto-trackers, tracking dogs, nets and cuffs and guns. They had enough weaponry to take down a whole prison full of ghosts just to track down one man.

Tucker led them to one of the larger base tents and directed them to a set of computer monitors. The one he focused on was satellite footage of a blur of magenta light flashing across the sky.

"That's the first shot they got of him." Tucker confirmed, "They contacted me first so I could generate a software that could detect ectoplasmic signatures. Here's the same spot but with the software installed into the camera. See that streak? That's a trace of ghost energy he left when he passed by. We scanned all his old mansions and this one has the most recent trace. It stops somewhere in the house."

Danny looked at the old house. Over the fourteen years of abandonment, it had been completely swallowed by the vegetation that now it looked more like a house shaped shrub rather than a mansion. Despite this, he still remembers the many ordeals he had under that roof. The most prominent was when Vlad took him to make an evil clone of himself. The only reason he survived was his friends and Dani's willingness to see the light.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked in monotone, unable to find an accurate emotion to express.

"The trackers stop somewhere in the lower level, we assume it's his lab. We can't get past the vegetation and even if we did, we wouldn't be able to navigate the house. You've been in there before, so you know what to look for and you are able to phase through to actually get there."

At that, two white rings formed at Danny center and crawled up and down until they reached above his head and at his feet. They disappeared replacing the raven haired, blue-eyed twenty-eight-year-old with the snow haired, green-eyed ghost that the world has come to know as their hero Danny Phantom.

"What do you want me to look for?"

"We aren't quite sure, any signs of recent activity that would let us know what he's been planning."

Tucker handed Danny a set of headphones with a microphone and a camera attached, just like the ones they used as kids except a little more sophisticated. Danny fixed the headset to his ears and turned it on. Immediately, two of the monitors switched on with footage from his camera. One showed normal footage while the other showed a streak of magenta far off towards the weeded house.

"All systems are on line." one of the people at the computers confirmed.

Tucker nodded in confirmation and turned to Danny. The two gave each other a half-hearted smile and a nod, letting the other know that they were ready. Sam placed a comforting hand on her husband's shoulder and Danny's stoic green eyes met her concerned lilac eyes.

"You sure you want to do this?" She said, "Vlad was dangerous before, but fourteen years out in space who knows what he'll do."

"It's okay Sam," Danny assured, "I defeated him before, I can defeat him again. He is my problem from the start and so it is my job to bring him down."

Sam smiled and gave him a kiss for good luck.

"Please be careful."

"Aren't I always?"

With that he flew off towards the house and phased in. The first room he entered was dark and hard to see even with his ethereal glow. Danny generated a ghost ray in his palm to illuminate the room in a green light. It was a large room with bookshelves and a fireplace; invasive weeds entangled everything. Danny could see underneath various pelts and animal trophies adorning the walls and shelves. He then recognized the room as the place Vlad shocked him with the Plasmius Maximus and had his ghostly animal experiments chase him into the woods like big game. He internally shuddered at the memory of being shocked by that device; it was far from fun.

He phased a few floors down until he made it to the room that held the worst of his memories. The lab looked just as it did when Danny fried it with his ghostly wail, which unnerved him dearly. There was no dust anywhere, no plants entangling the walls, no sign of age whatsoever. It looked just as it did fourteen years ago. Worse than that, it looked like it had been recently used.

"Tucker, are you getting this?" Danny said into his mic.

"There has definitely been a lot of activity here recently. There are ecto-traces here no older than a week."

"Why would Vlad take stuff from this lab? I destroyed everything."

Danny made the ray in his hand to make the room brighter. With the extra amount of light, he noticed a difference in the lab. There was a great paucity of equipment than he remembered from before. A lot of the walls and tabletops were barren, leaving marks of what was once there.

"Hold on Tuck, it looks like he moved a lot of equipment out of here."

"Turn to your left, there's a lot of ecto-energy there and not all of it appears to be Vlad's."

Danny turned where Tucker told him. All he found was what appeared to be yet another bare wall.

"Looks like it was nothing." Tucker said dejectedly.

Danny's eyes narrowed, he didn't trust it.

"I don't think so." He said as he flew over to the wall. He knocked on the wall and found an unusually hollow spot. He placed his ear to the wall and heard a strange but ever so familiar sound.

"I thought so."

He put his palm to the wall and shot it with a ghost ray. Part of the wall crumbled to the ground, revealing a fully functioning ghost portal hidden inside.

"Tuck, you getting this?"

"Yeah, whatever Vlad is up to he moved his place of operation to the Ghost Zone."

"Great, now we have to deal with the Observants; and on Christmas. If they were hard to work with before, I can just imagine how difficult they will be with the Truce in effect until Boxing Day."

Danny phased out of the house and returned to the base with Sam and Tucker.

"What should we do now?" Sam asked.

"What can we do? Vlad's somewhere in the Ghost Zone right now, under the Observants jurisdiction. I can go over there and deal with them now, but they won't do anything until the end of the Truce."

"Then we should head back before Ophelia knows we're gone, there's no use wasting quality time with her or your parents if we can't do anything about it at the moment."

Tucker's phone rang. He checked the caller ID and smiled before answering the phone.

"Hey honey, how’s my boy?"

…

"What do you mean, what's wrong?"

…

Tucker eyes widened in shock, making Danny and Sam very uneasy. Valarie was an officer in the thirteenth precinct in Amity Park; if there was ghost related crime she would be the one taking care of it. Tucker was quite used to his wife's job; being that he grew up ghost fighting with Danny and his main clientele were the police in charge of the Ghost-Human Crime Unit (GHCU) and the Bureau of Ghostly Affairs. At this point, Tucker doesn't react much to anything Valarie would tell him. The fact that he was right now meant something really horrible happened.

Tucker turned to Danny and handed the phone to him.

"It's for you." He said in a distant voice.

Danny told the phone from him and took off his headset to put the phone to his ear.

"Hello Valarie, what's wrong?"

"Danny, you need to get back here fast." Danny could hear her suppressing a sob over the phone.

"What's going on, what happened?" A tone of urgency and panic sharpened his voice.

"We got a complaint about a disturbance at your parents’ house. I was the first to come in and to find…"

"What, find what? What did you find, answer me!"

It was quite for a while, but not exactly. Danny could hear Valarie release enough stress to speak to him. Valarie was crying. One of the toughest officers on the force, whom he never saw shed a tear in his life, was crying. Whatever happened, it must have been terrible if Valarie was crying.

"Danny, I'm very sorry to tell you this… but your parents are dead. They were murdered, and it appears to be by a ghost."

Danny was speechless. His stomach was in knots and he felt like his heart stopped for a minute before starting again and what felt like pumping shards of ice into his veins. He felt a hot tear fall down his cheek, unsure of where it came from. His parents were dead. The people who raised him, protected him, made him what he was today, were killed by a ghost. And not just any ghost, he knew just who it was. This ghost was one seriously crazed up fruitloop turned cold-blooded killer. Then it hit him, they weren't the only ones in the house…

"Where's Ophelia?" Danny said; a cold angry edge was heard in his voice.

Sam immediately pricked up at her daughter's name. She knew this was bad.

"Danny, what happened? What's going on?"

Danny was quiet. He did not seem to hear her.

"Valarie, where's Ophelia?"

"There were signs of a struggle all around the house. There were no clear signs of a winner and not a large amount of blood aside from your parents…"

"Where is Ophelia! WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER!"

His ears were ringing from the amount of blood rising to his head. His anger was taking form of a harsh green glow emitting from his non-corporeal body.

"Gone," Valarie finally said in a hoarse voice, "whoever killed your parents took her with them."

Danny's grip on the phone loosened and he let it drop on the ground. This was too much to take in for him. It was Christmas Eve and his parents were dead and his only child kidnapped. No, not Christmas _Eve_ , it had stopped being Eve hours ago. It was Christmas day, with only a couple of hours away from sunrise.

"Danny," Sam said with fear thick in her voice. Tears were in her eyes as she was becoming overwhelmed with panic. "Danny, what's wrong? What happened, where's Ophelia?"

"He killed them." He said, seemingly unaware to whom he was talking to.

"Who killed them, what happened!"

"Plasmius happened." He said. His voice was shaking with anger, fear, and grief. "Vlad killed my parents…and he took Ophelia."

 


	4. Not Santa

Ophelia was half asleep when she saw her godfather Tucker with her intuition. She was about to phase down when she felt the emotions in him. She couldn't hear them clearly, her father and godfather, but she could hear the urgency in their voice and she felt the fear and anger in her father. Whatever was going on, it was far from good.

The door slammed and she felt her parents leave with her godfather. She decided then to float down and see if her grandparents knew anything about what had just happened.

"Grandma, Grandpa," she said, "Where did Mommy and Daddy go?"

"Nowhere Sweetie, go back to bed." said her grandmother.

"Why was Uncle Tucker here and why did he leave?"

"It's nothing for you to worry about right now," said her grandfather "Go back to bed."

"You're not telling me something bad. Where did Mommy and Daddy go with Uncle Tucker?"

"We'll tell you in the morning, Ophelia, just go back to bed."

Her eyes flashed, she didn't like it when people wouldn't tell her anything.

"No, I want to know what is going on _right now_!" She stamped her foot and crossed her arms.

"Mommy and Daddy will tell you when they get home." her grandmother said, "They won't very happy when they get back when they learn you've been up all night. Go to bed right now or you won't get any presents tomorrow."

Ophelia pouted. She would have protested but she did feel pretty tired, and she really didn't want to upset her parents if what they were doing was as urgent as she felt. And then there were the presents…With a huff, she stomped up the stairs and returned to her bed in her father’s former bedroom. She stared angrily at the ceiling, her eyes shining green light to the constellation charts attached to the ceiling. In no time at all, as she only had enough energy to hang on to a strong emotion for only such an amount of time being so small, her eyes dimmed as her lids fluttered shut. Her ethereal glow dimmed only a little as she slowly drifted into deep sleep. Her last thought was of her Mom and Dad, and what would make them so worried for…

* * *

 

She awoke almost immediately to the sense of an ominous presence. In the back of her mind, she saw the presence as a magenta light. It was something she never felt before and gave her a chill down her spine. She felt it was similar to her Dad, her sister Dani and herself, but at the same time nothing like them. She knew for certain it was definitely _not_ Santa: not only was this presence creepy beyond belief, but she also sensed something ghostly in it.

She kept her eyes shut tight, reminiscing of a story she read about a man who would take children's eyes to feed his young on the moon. She then heard her grandparent's voices. They were shouting angrily and it seemed to be directed at the eerie presence. It seemed as though they knew it.

  _How would they know it?_

_Where would they know it?_

 She knew better than to go down and see what was going on, but her curiosity got the better of her and she got out of bed to check. She turned invisible as she passed the doorway and floated down the stairs so as to make sure no on would hear her coming. When was halfway down the stairs, she stopped and looked through the railing at the scene in the living room in front of her.

The presence was a man in a business suit. He had dark blue eyes that were almost grey-black and a grey beard and grey hair pulled back into a ponytail. Despite the fact that Jack and Maddie had their ghost weapons aimed at him, he had his hands behind his back and wore a confident and arrogant air about him. There was also something else there too, as Ophelia could sense. Underneath the arrogant smile, behind those cunning eyes, there was hatred and anger there. It was white hot with revenge and bloodlust, all of it directed at her grandparents (mainly her grandfather, for some strange reason). Why it was directed towards them, she did not know, but she knew this man's intentions were far from good.

"Jack and Maddie," he said in a calm, cheery voice. "My, have you changed since I last saw you. But I suppose that's what happens when you don't see someone for fourteen years."

"What do you want, Vlad!" Jack said angrily, never once keeping his eyes and his weapon off of him.

Vlad put a hand lightly to his chest in mock distress.

"Why Jack, I am offended. You mean I can't just drop by and see my old friends after a decade and a half of exile in deep space?"

 _Friends?_ Ophelia thought in surprise of hearing him speak. _There is_ no _way Grandma and Grandpa would be friends with a presence like his._

"We are not friends Vlad," Maddie said in a harsh tone Ophelia never heard before, "and as far as I'm concerned, we never were."

The hand on his chest curled almost into a fist, his smile gone with an ever so slight of hurt in his eyes. Though, they seemed to be more out of habit rather then by any real emotional pain.

"Ah my dear, sweet Maddie. Once I would have been truly hurt to hear such words coming from you, but that was when I loved you and had hope for us. I learned to give up such useless fancies long ago when everything was taken from me. And speaking of which, where is that son of yours? I wish to reacquaint with him as well, I have much to catch up with the dear boy."

Ophelia was getting very nervous. He knew her Daddy as well?

"You are not welcome in our house Masters," Said Jack aggressively, "Or do you prefer to be called Plasmius?"

At the mention of the name Plasmius, two black rings formed at Vlad's center. They crawled up and down his body until they disappeared at the head and feet of the creature that replaced him. It had a black beard and black hair shaped upwards in a crescent, similar to pictures Ophelia saw of Medieval Romanian nobility. His skin was a turquoise color and his eyes were red, no pupils or whites, just glowing red holes. He wore a suit similar to her Daddy's but with an opposing white and black color scheme, a tunic and pants set as opposed to a straight jumpsuit, and a white cape with and red interior and a collar that stuck up to below his pointed ears. He smiled, showing his sharp fangs that had replaced his human teeth. Ophelia was scared, as he look like a lot of the monsters in the books Mommy would read to her at night. She was terrified at the thought that this thing was just like her Dad, just like her sister, just like herself.

"I suppose if you won't tell me where he is, then I'll have to lure him out."

He opened his palm and a magenta ball of ghost energy formed in his hand. He threw it at her Grandparents, who jumped out of the way in the nick of time. They then took aim and fired their weapons at him. He formed a shield in front of him that deflected all of their shots, he crossed his arms and shook his head as if something was funny.

"Honestly, after all these years I thought you would have improved your skills enough to be an actual threat."

He then opened his palm towards the shield. It glowed and absorbed the shots fired at it. Vlad then flexed his palm and the shield fired their shots back at them with a boost of its own energy. It hit both of them square in the chest and knocked them to the ground. He floated across the room and stood over them, watching them groan in pain with fascination. His hand glowed and the two were enveloped in magenta energy and lift from the ground, keeping them separate from each other.

"I'll need someone to lure Daniel out. The only question is if I need the both of you or just one."

He looked at the two of them, seeing which one would be best to take.

"I think just one of you will do fine, don't you? I think I would be so much better without five hundred pounds of idiotic, cumbersome, dead weight."

His other hand glowed in the direction of Jack when he got blasted to the nearest wall by a green ghost ray. The blow loosened his grip and released the two older Fentons from their imprisonment, letting them fall to the ground. Vlad got up and looked in the direction of where the shot came from. The source of the shot, to his absolute surprise, was a four-year-old girl in frilly purple pajamas. Her hand was still glowing from the shot and so were her eyes as they shined through the bangs of her disheveled ink black hair. A familiar pair of red-lensed haz-mat goggles hung around her neck and reflected the glow of her hand with a red tinge.

"Leave them alone!" She said while flying over to give him an ecto-charged punch to the jaw. Vlad grabbed her tiny fist in his, stopping the blow mid-air. He let go of her hand and she stayed afloat, held there by his ghost energy. She tried to break out of it, but she could hardly move.

“My, my, what do we have here?” he asked mockingly, “It looks like Daniel has done _a lot_ since I was gone.”

He looked more closely at the young child in the air, causing her to shrink in fear. She had ghostly green eyes and raven hair just like her father, but there were traits in her, the fury and strong will, the porcelain white skin with slight rose cheeks, that he could tell belonged to her mother that seemed so familiar to him. Despite the sweet and loving features of the young girl, Vlad was appalled at the site of her.

“Phantom became more and more powerful, gained more and more admiration, and he had the audacity to have a child just to rub it in my face!"

Jack picked up his weapon and hit Vlad square in the chest. Ophelia fell out of his energy field and fell into his free hand.

"Leave her alone, Vlad! You're problem is with us!"

"That is where you're wrong, old friend, my problem is with all of you Fentons. Why is it that you are given everything you want while I get everything taken from me? All I ever wanted: love, a family, power, fame, adoration, you have it handed to you while I have nothing. And _now_ you have grandchildren to pass down the family tradition of taking happiness away from good people. Why should Daniel have a child to pass down his ghost powers to while I have nothing? I am more powerful than him, more experienced, better trained than he is. Well I've had it! I'm putting my foot down here and now. I am collecting my dues and taking what is rightfully mine!"

He split himself in two and attacked Jack, one knocking him across with an ecto-charged punch and the other snatching the little girl from his arms. The original absorbed the duplicate once the task was done. Maddie tried to free her by attacking him with a less bulky version of the Ghost Gauntlets. Despite her expert skills as a ninth degree black belt martial artist, Vlad blocked every attack with ease and knocked her across the room at her husband. During this time, Ophelia tried to turn intangible to slip her way out of his grip. Vlad smiled in acknowledgement of her attempt and tightened his grip on her such that nothing, ghost, human, or anything in between, could get out of.

"I must thank Daniel for donating that obnoxious hero complex of his onto you." he said to the frightened little girl squirming in her arms, "If you hadn't tried to save your grandparents, I wouldn’t have known you existed. They would have lived long enough for me to lure Daniel and seek my revenge. But no, you are much better than I have hoped, dear child."

"Let me go!" she commanded angrily, trying poorly to hide the fear in her voice.

He smiled as he lifted Jack and Maddie into the air one more time. He turned Ophelia's head towards them.

"Don't you want to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa, dear child?" he asked in a sickly sweet tone, "It is the last time you'll ever see them, after all."

"No!"

His free hand raged with electricity, the same current appeared around Jack and Maddie as they screamed in pain.

“You’re hurting them!” cried Ophelia. Vlad laughed.

“Oh no, my dear, that is not hurting them. _This is!”_

His fingers curled into a tight claw. The older Fentons bended in unnatural ways with a disturbing crunch. The screams rang louder, sounding like nothing the little girl ever heard before.

"Stop! Please!" she cried out with tears streaming down her face, she tried to look away but his grip was too strong. She had to endure the whole thing. If she could look up, she would see a deviant and ecstatic smile spread across Vlad's face.

“As you wish.” He said.

He fired two powerful ghost rays through their hearts like bullets. Their screaming stopped, their color already lost as blood was dripping from their entry and exit wounds. Vlad released them from the force field and let them drop to the ground with a loud thud. Ophelia was screaming and crying in shock and grief at what she just saw. He cradled her in his arms and petted her head gently, ignoring the bleeding corpses only a few feet away from him.

"Now, now, that's what you get for being a Fenton. But you don’t have to be. If you’re a good little girl, you won’t have to share their fate

Ophelia tried to claw at his face.

"No! I hate you! I want my daddy!" she screamed as she tried to hurt the man who killed her grandparents.

Vlad tightened his grip on her until his glove covered nails dug into her skin. Without any warning, he sent an electric shock across her body. She let out a loud scream in pain before she slipped out of consciousness, falling limp in his arms.

"Well, I'll just have to see if I can't change your mind, won't I?" he said to the unconscious child in his arms.

He flew down to the Fenton's lab in the basement and the two disappeared into the Ghost Zone with the Fenton Portal II.

 


	5. Crime Scene

When Danny, Sam, and Tucker arrived at the scene they could hardly believe their eyes. There were scorch marks everywhere from the ghost rays that were shot by both weapons and hands. It didn't look as bad as a room would be after Danny's fights, it actually looked like the fight was very short. Sadly, that did not make Danny feel better. He knew his parents well enough that when the welfare of their family was at stake they would not hold back to take down a threat. The thought of them giving their all and Vlad being able to take them both down in such a short time made him turn a sickly pale, even for a ghost.

What sickened him the most was what laid in the center of the room. As custom in homicides, they were already covered under a sheet out of respect and ease. Blood was already staining the white cloth, thick as it was, leaving red spots where the wounds were and the pool creeping out from underneath. Because it was a crime scene, they could not move the bodies in any way so as not to tamper with any evidence. There was no need for any evidence, of course, as everyone knew what happened, but they had to follow protocol to avoid the prominent risk of a mistrial if and when they caught the monster. Under the red stained sheet, they could see their forms broken and misshapen from being dropped from the ceiling. He could tell that they were dead before they even hit the ground, and, by the way the limbs were shaped, they went through excruciating pain resulting in not only fractures by full on bone snaps. These thoughts alone sickened poor Danny to his stomach, and so it was quite obvious that he did not wish to see them underneath the sheet.

Aside from the bodies, there was no sign of blood anywhere in the house. This gave hope to Danny and Sam, knowing that at least Vlad did not kill Ophelia here. This gave them hope, but it did not ease their pain and worries for their only child.

Valerie met the three of them in what had been the living room. By now she had stopped crying and acted like she had not been grieved at all, but her ashen face, red eyes and dark smudges on her face where she wiped off her running mascara had betrayed her facade. Tucker immediately went to her side to comfort, but she brushed him off coldly as if she didn't know him. This was how Valerie always acted on the job, she wasn’t warm to anyone unless they needed consoling so as to look professional. Tucker was used to this, and he didn’t mind it at all. This was because he understood why. Valerie is the very first head of the Thirteenth Precinct, the very first GHCU department in the world and the only one in Amity Park. She had a reputation to keep and an expectation to set, and you do not do that by weeping uncontrollably at a crime scene no matter who the victim was. Tucker learned to accept that and respect her decision, knowing a loving wife and caring mother would take her place once the day was done and she crossed the threshold of their house.

She turned to her husband, or simply Mr. Foley at the time being.

"Do you have that software set up?" she asked him.

"Yeah, its in the Speeder." he replied in the semi-serious tone he always had around her.

"Bring it here, I want to see what exactly happened."

Without another word, he rushed out of the house to the Specter Speeder. Valerie turned to Danny and Sam, her expression lightened and her eyes thawed.

"I'm sorry about your loss, you guys. I wish there was something I could've done to prevent this."

"It's alright, Valerie," Danny said, "I should've known he would do something like this…. I should've stayed here to protect them."

"It's okay Danny, it's not your fault." Sam consoled, just now gaining control of her tears to speak. "You shouldn't beat yourself up about it either, we still have to find Ophelia. Knowing him he's planning to use her to destroy you, and he would need her alive to do it."

"So you think she's not dead?" asked Danny in an upbeat tone, "Do you think he has her alive somewhere?"

"Think? Danny I know. If our daughter was dead, I would have felt it by now."

"How?"

She smiled, showing the warm sweet woman that only her family gets to see.

"A mother's love is a powerful thing."

Tucker returned with a video camera and a screen. He turned on the camera and the screen immediately showed the feedback. The room was covered in magenta streaks, starting from the living room and ending in the basement. The room also had little green streaks all around the room, indicating where Ophelia had been all night. They saw by the traces that Ophelia had waited at the staircase for sometime before taking the offensive and blasting Vlad. That was the only blow she managed to get on him. The traces showed that it took Vlad little time and effort to overpower Ophelia and take her away. Danny and Sam were horrified to find that Vlad and Ophelia had stood right where Jack and Maddie's bodies stood, and the age of the traces matched up with the estimated time of death. This meant that the monster held her and made her watch as he brutally tortured and killed her grandparents. Sam was beyond grief stricken at the thought of what her four-year-old daughter was forced to see, Danny was enraged simply by the fact that the villain had touched her at all.

The freshest traces ended in the basement through the Ghost Portal, confirming their suspicions of where he might have taken her. They may not know where exactly, but they knew they were somewhere in the Ghost Zone.

Danny turned to Tucker.

"Do you know if this thing will work in the Ghost Zone?" he asked him.

Tucker shrugged.

"Never tried it before. Worse case scenario is that the atmosphere would absorb the signatures, but it is very unlikely it would do so in such a small amount of time."

"How so? I would think it would wash it off like a footprint on the beach." Valerie said.

"There's been some research done about the exact properties of the Ghost Zone. We haven't gotten all of it down, but apparently when things like vapors or energy signatures are dispersed it’s more like jet streams in the sky or an ink mark on skin. It doesn't wash off more than it just fades."

"Good enough for me," Danny said while snatching the device from Tucker's hands, "I'm going in."

He changed back to Phantom and was about to dive into the Portal when Sam grabbed him by the arm.

"Danny, no!" she scolded, "It's too dangerous to go on your own. We need to get reinforcements."

"By the time we do that, the traces will be gone and who knows how far away they'll be. I can do this Sam. I've fought him more times than anyone else has. I know I can beat him."

"And what if you don't win? What will happen to Ophelia then when she doesn't have her father around to help her when the rest of her powers come in?"

"She may not even live that long if I don't do something, and sitting around waiting for this stupid Truce to be over won't do any good. I promise I'll come back, and I'll have Ophelia with me too."

He gave her a long embrace and a passionate kiss, just like he had given all those years ago in the North Pole. It was the kiss someone gave in case it was the last time they’ll ever see them again. Before she could say anything else, Danny flew through the Portal leaving both the room and the Human Plane. Sam was worried, no not worried. There is not a word potent enough to explain what she was feeling for her husband and child, but worried left some clue to how she felt. Tucker put a comforting hand on her shoulder; she absent-mindedly placed her hand on top to acknowledge the touch. Valerie stood next to her and put her hands over her arms. Sam fell into them crying, emotions overwhelming her beyond the capability to stand on her own. Valerie held her gently, like she was her child.

"It will be okay," She whispered, "They'll be back safe."

"You can't be certain of that." she heard Sam say muffled under Valerie's and her own sobs.

"You're right, I can't be certain that they will. But yet I am, and they will be back safe."

Sam stared out into the Ghost Portal. Her tired eyes gave a green halo around the swirling vortex. How could it be so bright when it’s hiding something so dark on the other side.

“I hope so.”


	6. Little Girl Lost

Ophelia awoke in a bed. She was tucked in and buried alive in pillows. By the fact that she had to brush her snow white locks from her glowing purple eyes, she knew she was somewhere in the Ghost Zone. Her first instinct was to find her parents, specifically her father. Her father always knew what to do in these situations. When she found the door to the room was locked, she phased through the walls. The halls were poorly lit by flickering candles, leaving her better off with her own ghostly glow to light her way. She couldn’t find anyone. Not her father, not her mother, not even her grandparents. 

Grandparents.

Somehow, she forgot what had just happened only an hour ago. Her grandparents’ lifeless forms collapse onto the ground like broken dolls. The monster, their killer, holding her and making her watch their last agonizing moments, letting her know it was all her fault. She wanted her father now more than ever.

“Daddy? Daddy!”

She cried it over and over; trying every door despite her intuition telling her there was no one there. When she reached the last room on the end of the hall, pitch black and large, she collapsed onto the ground and cried. There was too much sorrow for such a small child to contain.

 "There, there, dear child," she heard a voice said, "I'm here. There's no need to cry."

Ophelia's eyes turned to purple flames when she recognized the voice. She turned to the direction of the source just as Masters stepped in, his human shape just barely pulled from the shadows by the little girl’s glow.

"Where am I?" she demanded in a stern but childish tone, "Where's my Daddy? I want my Daddy!"

Vlad smiled, showing a rather convincing display of kindness in those raccoon eyes.

"Sweet child, _I'm_ your father now.”

"You're not my Daddy!"

His sweet and welcoming smile turned into a stern and serious expression.

“No, I’m not, I’m better than him. I saved you from a disappointing and miserable life with that old family of yours. You have a chance to better yourself and live up to the expectations you were born with, a chance you didn't have with them. Think of all the power we could have together. We can rule over the entire planet as the superior species we truly are.” He helped her to her feet, arrogantly believing he already convinced the girl to his side. “If you let me be your new father, I can show you how much better your life will be. With me, you can be the princess all you little girls dream of."

Ophelia retreated. A flicker of fear raced across the little girl's eyes. Most of the things he was saying made no sense to her. He was not her father and he never would be. She did not know _why_ he had done this to her, but she did know one thing. He was a bad man who did terrible things. She would never call someone like him _daddy_.

 "I want my _real_ Daddy, I want to go home!"

With only a small smile, he clapped his hands and the room was flooded with light.

"This is your home now."

If Ophelia’s eyes weren't already glowing, she would've needed to squint to adjust to the light. She looked around the room, its extravagant pieces of furniture, adorned in gold and red plush, littering it. Tall, lean windows rose practically from the floor to the ceiling, revealing a dark snowscape that awaited just beyond the glass. Ophelia had only seen such extravagance in storybooks. In them, this would be where the kind and loving king and queen would live, or the rich benefactor who adopted the poor orphaned protagonist. Any child would want to live in a house as beautiful as this, but Ophelia was not any child and knew the house belonged to an evil person. A fireplace had found itself behind where Masters stood. The flames gave him a sinister glow, reminding the girl of the creature hiding just beneath the surface, the one that killed her grandparents. Ophelia felt very afraid, despite the cozy and warm atmosphere. She did not like this man one bit and she wanted her father to comfort her more than ever.

Though she was afraid, she crossed her arms and feigned childish arrogance. Her father had always taught her to act brave even when she was too scared to move.

"This is not my home,” she insisted, “I want to go home."

His smile was gone again, this time replaced with concern. It scared Ophelia how much it reminded her of how her father would look the time she tried crossing the street without him.

"Dear child, listen to reason! Your grandparents are dead. Your parents will be too, _very_ soon. No one will be left to take care of you, no one left who has a chance to understand you. You will be left all alone in a dark, cruel world that would rather tear you apart than lend you a hand. I am the only chance you have to survive. This house is the only place you can be safe. Here you can live up to your potential, here you can be loved.”

She was quiet for a moment, utterly confused. Confusion then turned into frustration. She shook her head and clawed at her hair.

"No it's not!” she said, stamping her foot firmly on the ground, “This place belongs to a bad man. I don't want Masters sighed.

“I’ve taken you from your dull old life and gave you one better suited for someone of your potential. All I want is to be your friend, what else could you want from me?”

“I _want_ to go _home_!” she said, sounding like she was on the verge of a tantrum, “I want my Mommy and _Daddy_!”

“Now, now, my child, this may be hard for you to accept, but I am all the family you need. And like a true father, I promise to keep you satisfied and well provided for. You can trust me, I only wish to see you happy.”

"Said the Spider to the Fly!"

Masters’ face darkened considerably then, but he replaced it with a smile just a quick. He placed a hand

on little Ophelia's head, petting her as if she were his newly adopted kitten. She did not like it one bit.

"Such a clever girl you are." he murmured as a proud father would. "I can see it in your eyes. You are

just a bit, should we say, _lost_. Your family has destroyed _everything_ I've worked so hard to achieve.

You see, they made me who I am. It is because of your _pathetic_ grandfather I have become

the monster that frightens you so." he said dramatically, feigning to be touched deeply my his own

performance. Sensing that this tactic was getting him nowhere, he tried a different approach. He then

rounded back onto her, hoping fear would be the trigger to coax the girl to his side. "And I was his friend; a _close_ one at that. Now, imagine what they would do to _you_. Their own flesh and blood. Because of the fact that you were _born_ half ghost, well, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if your parents wanted to experiment on you. It is probably why they left you with your grandparents to begin with. All I wanted, my dear, sweet little girl, was to save you from them. I wanted to take you away before they turned you into something as detestable as me. I admit, I'm quite ashamed of the monster that I am. Perhaps, I just need someone to help me remember my humanity." He said. "Maybe all I truly need is you. Together we can stop your parents from doing the same to you as your grandparents did to me. All you have to do is renounce the name _Fenton_ ,” He spat out the word like the bitterest venom, “And swear to me you _never_ want to see those bad people _ever_ again."

Ophelia swatted his hand away in disgust and took a step back. That spiteful, determined look in the little girl’s eyes seemed so familiar to Vlad that he was certain he knew her mother.

"You're a _liar_! A big, fat, stinky LIAR! My family would _never_ hurt me! I’ll NEVER leave my Mommy and Daddy! I want to go home, _now_! You’re CRAZY!”

Any shred of kindness left his face then, sucked out of him by the black hole that had once been his heart. He grabbed Ophelia's hand. Black rings appeared at his middle and turned him into the monster that took her away from her family. Quick as lightning, Plasmius twisted her hand until he heard a satisfying crunch as he snapped her fragile, little arm. The little girl screamed. She had never felt a worse pain in her life. Cruelly smiling down at the miserable sight, he flung the girl across the room without hesitation. Despite the intense pain, some part of Ophelia remembered her ability to become intangible. She phased through the wall and landed on the other side gracelessly and painfully.  She tried to sit up, cradling her broken wrist. She didn’t have a chance to see that Vlad had phased through before he blasted her into the wall on the other side of the room.

"It appears I have arrived a little too late. Your parents have already taught you how to be a _horrible, naughty_ little girl. But there's still hope for you, dear child. Ah yes, there’s still hope for you _yet!_ Perhaps I should teach you how to mind your manners."

He grabbed her by the bad wrist and shocked her enough that she wouldn't lose consciousness. Her screams peeled and vibrated off the walls that the whole house could hear her pain. Sadly, there was nobody in the house, owner included, who cared in any way about what happened to the pitiful child.

"First lesson-"said the angry ghost as the girl writhed in pain, her heart-wrenching screams still hanging in the air. " _Never_ insult the sanity of your betters!"

Twisting her arm, and losing another scream from Ophelia, Vlad continued. "Second lesson- The next time someone offers you an opportunity better than an ungrateful brat like you deserves, you _take it_!"

For good measure, he twisted her arm again, causing tears to pour from her eyes and even more blood- curdling screams to escape her lips. "Third lesson- _Father_ knows _best_!"

He twisted her arm one last time before tossing the girl to the ground, as if she were a toy he had just finished playing with and had gotten bored of. Whether she was shaking violently from tears or from going into shock, he could not say. More importantly, he did not care. He was just glad to have caused the child some pain. The girl shot up her head and looked at him with venomous purple eyes. Vlad was surprised by the amount of hostility those innocent eyes were holding. Surprised, but not the least bit threatened.

"You. Are. NOT! My. DADDY!" she spat at him between sobs. "I. HATE! You."

He sneered and grabbed her in a chokehold. He pulled his hand in slowly to cause more pain to the child as

he lifted her into the air. Ophelia struggled and kicked, but she had no hope of winning the struggle. 

With a deep, menacing voice, Plasmius asked her "Do you know what happens to little girls who refuse to behave?”

His free hand glowed and the floor parted below her feet, revealing a nest of flowers that coiled their vines and intertwined with themselves like a pit of serpents. 

They were the sinister cousins of roses with soft petals that spread out from the middle. They appeared to be delicate to the touch, as roses were, but they stared up at the little girl like the less than welcome cushions of the inside of a coffin. These flowers were a deep shade of crimson-as dark as freshly drawn blood. They awoke from buds that perched upon black vines that were armed to the teeth with lance-like thorns, protruding into every which direction.

"Those are Blood Blossoms, they are an ancient anti ghost remedy. Whenever a ghost comes close to them, it puts them in agonizing pain as is their very being is being gnawed away from the inside out while being burned from the outside. At least that's what I've been told. To this day, we don't what exactly causes them to react so negatively to ghosts. They are thought to have been extinct, I had to go through I lot of trouble to find just one of them and cultivate everything you see below."

He held her closer to his face.

"Originally it was mean for your father, but I believe that this is a far better cause. Until you learn to behave, you will stay in there and let me see just how long a half ghost can survive direct physical contact."

He gave her one last shock to make sure she was too weak to fly and dropped her into the pit. It was a long drop until she reached the bottom. Slowly, the felt the blossoms acting against her body as she approached them. First they were a discomforting tingle as one would get when their limbs fell asleep, but then grew to pickle of white-hot needles. She then felt her stomach ache inside her as if she was sick and it grew and spread across her body with the pain intensifying with every inch. Soon everything hurt, even breathing felt like a twisting stab to her lungs so she dared not scream. Plasmius heard her ear-splitting scream when she finally hit the bottom and was stabbed by the heinous thorns. A new pain overwhelmed her, an inexplicable pain that she never thought in her life existed. This pain was one a person could never adjust to, could never become immune to. Every nerve in her body screamed as it was set ablaze in agony. It was as if her very soul was being stung by burning, stinging, poisonous needles. What was worse, little Ophelia did not even have the chance to fall unconscious and fall into the safe and numb arms of oblivion; the Blood Blossoms would not allow it. They did not feel a child in pain. They felt a ghost and the flowers did as they were created to do: they reached hr soul- the very essence of her existence.

Ophelia was sent into a panic, trying desperately to free herself from the thorns that had now dug themselves deep into her skin. Her frantic attempts at freedom only resulted in the small child becoming entangled even deeper within the vines and thorns.  With every kick and pull, Ophelia became completely immersed in the mesh of shining, black thorns and crimson petals. She panicked as she felt the thorns dig deep inside of her, infusing themselves with her skin to reach their chosen target of her soul. All she could feel was the unimaginable pain of thorns of the bloody flowers that mocked her with their beauty and stung her with their velvety kiss.

 

 


	7. Little Girl Found

Tucker was right about the ecto-signatures. Within seconds of entering the Ghost Zone, the tracer showed various different streaks scattered and crossing each other. Some were thick and clear like a jet stream, others faded and barely readable like the colors of a toy that was left out in the sun for way too long. Vlad’s was by far the clearest, cutting trough it all and leaving a clear trail to wherever they may be. Despite this clear trail, Danny spent what may have very well hours, if not days, navigating himself around the Ghost Zone looking for them.

Danny always marveled on how much different the Ghost Zone seemed around Christmas time. It wasn’t quiet, nor was it all that empty, as he’d see ghosts go about their business around them just as they would do any other day. Perhaps it was more peaceful around this time due to the Truce that made it so different, not seeing ghosts try to pick fights with one another or more importantly them not trying to pick fights with him.

Danny immediately shunned these thoughts from his mind. He did not want to think of how pleasant everything was around them when he had just recently became an orphan. Nor did he want to think of how these ghosts around them may have just seen Plasmius fly by with his child, who would be in such obvious and such great danger that anyone could see, and yet they did _nothing_ to stop him and went on with their festivities. That was one trait Danny knew ghosts and humans had in common: both would willingly let someone else die as long as it didn’t become their problem.

Finally, when Danny felt he had flown the equivalent to the circumference of the Earth, he reached the end of the trail: a castle set upon a floating rock.

It look just like the mansion Vlad had back in Wisconsin, but yet there was something very wrong about it. The coloring was darker, the angles were more bent and crooked, the spires twisted in unusual, unnatural ways. The windows were of many different shapes and sizes, not one looking the same as another. Some looked like the eyes of a demon, glaring down at Danny with such cruelty he did not think could be conveyed in architecture. There were gargoyles, too, with sharp bared teeth and claws that looked like they could tear out the rocks the creatures were standing under. Everything about the house made it seem as if it were possessed by some grotesque beast, assuring the lookers-on that nothing living can stay there. It was a castle built on nightmares, Danny’s nightmares, and all the horrible memories they were made of.

“Yep, that’s Vlad’s house.” Danny mused.

 Danny was wary of going inside. If Vlad made the place this easy to spot then he must be expecting him, and have a trap set and ready for his arrival. But then he remembered that Ophelia was in there, imagining how scared and alone she must feel without her father there to comfort her. Then he tried to imagine what inhumanly thing Vlad must be putting her through, and then Danny was already inside the castle.

He stood in a hall lit only by dying torches hanging along the walls, giving only enough light to create flickering shadows. Danny was about to raise his hand to generate a light, when he saw something far down on the end. A small crack of light under one of the doors, while all the rest were dark. They must be in there, he thought. He turned himself invisible before floating down the hall, he didn’t want Vlad to know that he was there if he hadn’t already. He poked his head in through the door, scanning the area to make sure there was nothing waiting for him. The room has empty, despite the lights being on. Curious, Danny entered to get a better look around. He turned himself visible and walked with his feet on the ground, though being careful as not to make his footsteps not too loud. He felt uneasy once he had a better look at the room. It was completely empty, no furniture, no frames, nothing. Just four blank, white walls and an equally white ceiling and tiled floor.

When he made it to the center of the room, he nearly stumbled on the edge of the floor. He struggled to keep himself from falling forward, staggering a few feet back safely. Once he regained his balance, he looked over to the thing he nearly fell into.

The hole was quite large, but yet small enough for him not to notice from the end of the room. It was deep, very deep, with smooth walls all the way down. Whomever went down there was certain to never find a way back up, unless they could fly.

This confused Danny greatly, why would Vlad make a trap that would only work on a human? He knew Danny could fly, so what would be the point? He must’ve planned to keep one of his parents down there as bait to lure him out, before he found Ophelia. Danny looked further down and found something at the bottom.

He had only encountered blood blossoms once in his life, when he and his friends stumbled upon a portal that took him to witch-hunting Salem. Upon recognizing those same flowers as the ones in the bottom of the pit he took another step back, knowing too well the pain they caused him.

“Oh good, you remember. Here I thought I would have to spend all this time reminding you about the Blood Blossom.”

At the sound of his voice, Danny’s jaw clenched and his hand curled into a tight fist. He turned around to see none other than Plasmius standing by the door, holding that stiff and proper posture he had always seen him in. But there was something else, too, something different. There was something in his face – no, it was something in his eyes – that set Danny on edge. It was as if that well-composed mask of his had chipped away over the years, showing the true madman underneath. Or maybe, Danny thought, just maybe the mask hadn’t chipped at all. Maybe he has become even more insane and now it was too much for him to cover up with a cool smile and charismatic air. The thought of the man becoming even more dangerous scared Danny, though he was smart enough not to show it.

“Why Daniel, look how you’ve grown! I can hardly believe you are the same meek ghost boy I had found in the halls of my castle all those years ago.”

“Where is she!” Danny demanded.

Vlad’s smile changed into an expression of hurt that was fooling no one.

“Daniel, I’m hurt. I came all this way and went through all this trouble to see you and you won’t even say hello to your old Uncle Vlad.”

“Save the act, Plasmius! Where. Is. She.”

Vlad looked at him with feigned innocence, making Danny want to hit him. Hard.

“Now who could you possibly be talking about?”

“My daughter. You took her. After you killed my parents.”

“Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Don’t you dare, Vlad! You have gone _too far_ , tonight! If you don’t tell me where my daughter is _right now_ , I swear to god, I will _kill you right now!_ ”

 Vlad sauntered along the other side of the pit, Danny walked along his side in the opposite direction. He did not trust either Vlad or himself to let him get too close. Then he gave Danny’s least favorite smile, the one that told him that he was doing exactly what Vlad expected him to do and everything was going according to his secret plan.

“Now that you mention it, I do recall a little girl somewhere around here. Precious little thing, did have a bit of a behavior problem, though.”

“What did you do to her!”

“She was being a naughty little girl, she needed to be...corrected.”

“Corrected?”

Vlad said nothing more, he only cast his eyes down to the bottom of the pit. Danny followed his eyes down, confused of why Vlad would draw his attention down to those deadly plants.

Then he noticed something.

A glint of light, a small glare down beneath those thorny vines. He focused on the glare to see it coming from a piece of red glass. Then he saw swatches of purple around the glass. Snow white tangled in the thorns, bits of pink in the purple. Finally, he saw her face, and the horror struck him deeper than a knife’s blade could ever reach.

“OPHELIA!” he cried in terror.

“So that’s her name.” Vlad mused. “A lovely one, too. No doubt her mother picked it, you’re much too dull to choose something with such sophistication. Knowing you, you would’ve gone for some trite, simple thing like Violet.”

Danny was shaking, his eyes flashing so bright they were nothing but green. He had never felt more angry, more furious in his life.  
“You didn’t even know her name?” he said quietly. Even his voice was shaking. “You did this to her, all of this, and you didn’t even know her name!”

He stepped over the edge. He almost slipped when he felt it sink under his foot. He wasn’t the least surprise that he had lost control of his strength, crushing the floor beneath him with his light step, but didn’t care about that. He couldn’t care about anything at that moment, only his child dead below him and her murderer standing across from him.

“You have done so many horrible things in your time, Vlad, but this…This is the worst. Not even the most crazed up fruitloops would even _consider_ doing this, even in their wrong minds! You are a monster, a _complete and total monster!_ ”

His muscles coiled tight, ready to spring, hoping that the small distance the pit kept between them would give him enough velocity for his punch to shatter Vlad’s skull. This was it, their rivalry was going to end. He was going to kill Vlad Plasmius.  
“You…Are…DE-“

Then he stopped. He heard something. Deep in the bottom of the pit. A hoarse, weak cry so quiet that he could barely tell if it was really there.

“…Daddy…”

Danny looked back down to the bottom of the pit. When he first saw her, he thought she wasn’t moving. But now, seeing her a second time, he could see there were tremors, very small ones, here and there along her body. She was alive.

“Ophelia…?” he whispered, a small tear warmed his cheek.

His senses came back to him, crashing down on him like a tsunami. His anger and urge to kill subsided, replaced by the fear and urgency to save his kid.

“Hang on, sweetie, I’m coming!” he cried.

Without a second thought, Danny Phantom dove down into the pit. He was only a few feet away when the blossoms reacted to him. The pain was even worse than he remembered. It hit like a brick wall, denying his way through with great agony. The more he tried to force his way through, the more the blossoms resisted and more it hurt. Eventually, it became too much and Danny had no choice but to retreat a few feet higher. He was about to try again when the sound of laughter halted him.  
Vlad looked down at him. His cape spilled over his shoulder as he kneeled over the edge of the pit, the crimson red interior standing out against the white walls.

“You think this is funny?!” Danny snapped at him.  
“Frankly, my dear boy, this is the best entertainment I’ve had in twenty years.” He could hardly calm his laughter to speak.

Danny ignored him and tried a second time to go through the brutal force of the blood blossoms. Once again, he failed to go through. This time he was violently thrown back, nearly spat out of the pit altogether. Vlad laughed harder at this, his cackles echoed from the bare walls like the halls of an asylum.

“Which hurts more, Daniel,” Vlad said, “the blood blossoms, or seeing the thing you love most die in front of you? Or perhaps the greatest agony is to have her just beyond your reach,” the joy in his voice temporarily subsided as he added: “I know that pain _very well._ ”

Danny didn’t even bother to look up at him. He kept his eyes glued down at the blood blossoms as he tried to find a way to get through.

“Face it, Daniel, it’s over. Whatever life she has left in her will be gone within the next few minutes. There is no use trying to save her, no ghost could ever hope of getting through.”

The hope Danny had in saving Ophelia diminished when he realized that Vlad is right. There is no way he could get through the barrier, even if he did then what? Direct contact with the blood blossoms would be even worse, he knew. It would short out his powers and paralyze him in agony. He would have no way of saving himself, let alone Ophelia. There was nothing he could do to save her….

…unless…

“No ghost could ever hope of getting through,” he thought aloud, “But a human can!”

The white rings formed at his middle. As they parted, Danny Phantom disappeared, leaving Danny Fenton to plummet down the pit. With his heavy winter clothes weighing him down, along with the few tools he kept on him in case of emergencies, Danny reached the bottom of the pit in no time. He felt nothing, the blossoms saw no harm in his humanity. The worse they did is dig their thorns into his clothes and nick the few patches of skin he left unexposed.  
All of that he ignored, because as soon as his feet touched the ground he went straight to finding Ophelia.  
“Ophelia! Where are you, sweetie? Call out if you can hear my voice.”

In the time it took him to struggle and finally make his way to the bottom of the pit, the blood blossoms dragged Ophelia deeper into tangled mass. Danny searched, but he had lost all traces of his child.

“Ophelia, please, if you can hear me, shout! I need to know where you are. I need to know you’re alive.”

There was no sound to be heard, and he could not see a trace of her anywhere.

“Please, Ophelia, tell me where you are!”

His eyes darted all over the place. He was frantic, desperate to find her. Then he saw it. Somewhere in the knotted vines, he saw a glint of light. It was coming from the goggles, he knew.

He blessed his mother’s soul. Her last gift may have just saved her granddaughter’s life.

“Hold on, sweetie, I see you.” he told her, in case she could hear him, “Don’t move, I’ll get you out.”

If the past fourteen years of crime-fighting had taught him anything, it was to be prepared for anything. Especially for the moments when his powers are neutralized. He went through his pockets until he found his penknife. As soon as he had it, he went straight to cutting through the vines that were keeping him from his child. It took him a while, probably not as long as it felt, but eventually he reached her.

It was a sight that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Her pajamas were tattered, scraps of it were found stuck to the thorns surrounding her. What stayed on her was stained with blood. The older ones was a dark green, which it normally was in the Ghost Zone, but the fresher ones was crimson red. The nicks and scratches all over her were bleeding red as well, the older ones healed with dried green crusting over it. Danny didn’t know what it meant for her to bleed human blood in the Ghost Zone, but he was certain it wasn’t good.

There were burns all over her skin. They were shaped exactly like the blood blossoms down to the individual petal of the blooms. It didn’t take long for Danny to realize that these burns were made by the blossoms themselves. Their contact with her skin branded her with their own image like a hot iron. Not only were they killing her, but they were leaving their mark on her, letting anyone with eyes know that they were her cause of death.

Then there were the blood blossoms themselves.

There were still vines entangling her, tightly coiled around anything it could hold onto. Her hair was knotted in the briars, fanned out like threads on a loom. There were locks of white hanging idly on the thorns that caught them. Some colored green from the blood it touched, some were red. A vine was wrapped around her neck like a noose. It must be impossible for her to breathe, Danny assumed, let alone cry out loud enough for him to hear.

Carefully but urgently, he slipped the knife under the vine and did his best to cut away the plant without causing any more damage to her throat. He could swear she was breathing a little better now that the weeds weren’t strangling her. When he tried to pull the vines off, he found a section that refused to move. He tugged at it with a little more force and found that it was pulling her skin. Danny turned her head away to get a better look at the briar and soon wished he didn’t. The briar had buried itself into her skin. The child’s pale complexion showed Danny just how deeply the plant had dug into her flesh, the tiny black roots spreading and fading beneath the skin. They only stopped when they mingled with her veins.

Danny saw the same thing as he worked to cut the rest of her body free. All took root near where her veins were visible. The best Danny could do at that moment was cut the vines at the opening and hope they can both survive long enough to have a doctor remove the rest.  

There was no hope her Ophelia’s hair, it was far too knotted into the briars and there was far too little time. With a few clean swipes, he cut her hair free. All that was left on her head fell unevenly above her shoulders. At least it will grow back, he reminded himself.

Once she was completely cut free of the blood blossoms, Danny picked her up. He felt her whole body flinch in his arms, as if his touch was a whole new pain for her. It was a good sign, he thought, at least she’s still responsive, right? She was shaking now, did that mean she was cold or in shock? He knew either way she needed something warm to cover her. While keeping one arm around her, he shook off each sleeve of his coat. He wrapped her in the coat, making sure it wasn’t too tight for her to suffocate. Her only kept her face uncovered so she could breathe.

Ophelia didn’t look that much better than when she was in the briars. She was pale as death and her skin was horribly burned. Beads of sweat mixed with the blood on her face. Whatever breaths Danny could hear from her were shallow. Danny had to get her to a hospital fast, which brought him to his next problem: how was he getting back to Earth?

Danny looked up to the mouth of the pit. There was Plasmius, staring down at him this whole time, watching him struggle through. Danny wondered why he didn’t try to shoot at him while he was down here in a confined space. Then came the obvious answer: he didn't see the point in rushing things. Vlad knew that Ophelia had only moments of life left, and there was nothing the Fruitloop wanted more than to watch Danny suffer as his only child died in his arms. Unfortunately for Vlad, Danny wasn't going to give him that satisfaction.

Since Danny couldn't go out the same place he came, he had to go out the other way. Danny walked straight to the wall in front of him. Once he got to that side of the pit, he put his back against the wall. He held Ophelia tightly to him, make sure she won't slip out of his grip. His muscles coiled, ready to run. He needed a good running start to get him to whatever's on the other side of the possibly thick walls.

He looked up one last time as Plasmius, making sure he was still looking back down at him. Back in the day, this would've been the time when he would give a sly quip before doing something clever. But now was not the time, nor the place for silly puns. Instead, shouted a dry, "Later, Cheeshead!" before running to the other side of the pit.

And then, he jumped through the wall.

Apparently there wasn't anything on the other side of the wall. The pit was the lowest level of the castle, so he ended up outside in the open air of the Ghost Zone. The atmosphere of the Ghosts Zone was something like breathable water. Given enough momentum, a human can drift through the space with little difficulty. But  eventually, friction kicks in and the human slows down to a point where they're slowly drifted or simply floating there, dead in the water. That was something Danny couldn't risk, not while his child was dying by the moment, not with Vlad ready to go after them and minute now. No, Danny Fenton had done his part, now it's time for Danny Phantom to step up to the plate. While there were still blood blossoms in Ophelia, it shouldn't be enough to negate his powers, at least he hope it wasn't. It would at least sting him, that he new for sure. But even if did hurt, even if it did hinder his powers, he needed to at least try. He couldn't just sit there and wait for Vlad to come and kill them both, he needed to fly them out of here, and as long as he can still do that (and quickly at that) he'll endure whatever the blossoms can deal.

He took a deep breath and braced himself as he let the white rings take away Fenton and replace him with Phantom. Almost immediately, the pain came shooting into his body like a jolt of electricity. It was painful, yes, but it wasn't any different than what he would from a ghost ray. He could handle it, at least long enough to get them both to safety.

After checking to see if Ophelia was okay (she was no better, no worse), he was ready to speed off into the direction of the Fenton Portal. Just as he did, a ghost ray shot through the space in front of him, obliterating a floating rock that had the misfortune of crossing its path. Danny followed the direction of the ray and found Plasmius floating not too far away, his hands glowing and poised to make another shot.

“I commend you for your little trick,” said Plasmius, “It seems you have gained some wit over the years. But it’s not going to help you, Daniel, nothing will.  This time, you are not coming out of this alive, I assure it.”

And with that, he shot another ray. Danny just barely missed, the ray no more than a centimeter away from his nose. Danny didn’t take another chance and sped off. He was flying off as fast as he could possibly go, and was still pushing to go faster. He knew this wasn’t his top speed, he could feel it. It was the blood blossoms, he knew, they were slowing him down. The harder he pushed himself, the more they stung and the weaker he felt. But with every blast he dodged he kept pushing himself more and more. Every blast he dodged gave him more motivation to fly faster.

He looked over his shoulder. Vlad was still a good distance away, be Danny could see that he was slowly starting to gain on him. Danny tried shooting a ghost ray at him, just to slow him down a bit, but all he got was a tiny green spark. He felt himself slow down more when he made the spark. The blood blossoms were shorting out his powers worse than he thought. He couldn't shoot and fly at the same time, he had to pick one or the other if he wanted to make either of them useful. It was fight or flight. Danny wasn't going to waste time fighting.

Vlad was getting closer, with Danny barely missing the shots. He zig-zagged in attempt to avoid the rays, weaving around floating rocks to shake him loose. It gave him a little more distance, but nowhere near enough. He didn’t pay attention, zigging instead of zagging, and one of Vlad’s rays grazed his arm. He winced at the pain, but he didn’t let it stop him. He didn’t even check the wound, he’s had enough injuries in his lifetime to tell the difference between a serious injury and a survivable one. The injury didn’t even bother him, not really, it was the fact that the ray was far too close to Ophelia’s head. He kept going.

Vlad shot him a few more times, on the leg, the side of his face, his back. Each one stung him more. Each one made him feel weaker, made him feel like pure lead. He was starting to fly less and sink more. He knew Vlad was getting closer, he could feel it. It was only a matter of time until Vlad finally caught up to them, and then it would be all over.

Right when hope was starting to fade out of sight, he started recognizing the area around him. He knew doors around them and the ghosts who lived behind them. He had passed by them for years when he entered the Ghost Zone through his family’s portal. No sooner did he think of that, the Fenton Portal came into view.

He was almost home!

He just needed to fly on a little further. He looked over his shoulder one more time. Plasmius was no more than forty feet away, a distance that he could lapse far too easily. He just needed something to slow him down. He found an opportunity with a rock that was floating by his path. When he nearly passed it, he veered off and got behind it. With the little strength he had and the little force there was, Danny used his legs to push the rock towards Vlad. Either he couldn’t see it in time or he was flying at too fast a speed to stop enough fast enough, whatever it was Vlad flew straight into the rock. Just by the sound alone, Danny could tell that the crash was anything but painless. He wasn’t going to stop to see what happened. He took this small window and dashed straight into the Fenton Portal.

The first thing he did once he crossed over into the Human Plane was close the Portal doors. He used every lock and barricade feature his parents had ever installed into the machine, making sure nothing would get in from the other side. He could only make it halfway to the stairs when his knees finally buckled under him. He had managed to carry his child the whole way without a problem, but now suddenly it was as if there was a two-ton weight wrapped under the coat.  He gently set her down on his lap as he sat on the ground, breathing as though his lungs had just discovered air.  As he was trying to catch his breath, he unwrapped his coat to check on Ophelia. Her hair was still white, it should’ve changed to black by now. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing anymore, which stopped his heart for a moment.

“Oh no, no no! Ophelia, honey, stay with me!”

 He put two fingers to her neck to check her pulse, but instead got a nasty shock. He pulled away, but the pain was still there. He saw he got her blood on her fingers. He wiped the blood on his coat and the shock went away. He stared at his now clean hand in confusion.

“Her blood…” he panted out, “It’s hurting me… Why is it hurting me?”

Before he could think of an answer, there was a loud banging sound. It was coming from the Fenton Portal. The banging got louder, flashes of magenta spilled through the tiny cracks in the doors. Dents were being punched into the doors, forcing the whole thing to push forward with a loud, unforgiving metallic creak. Without warning, the doors were broken through. Danny tried to turn himself and Ophelia intangible to protect them from any piece of flying door, he also leaned over her to act as a shield in case his powers failed. After everything settled again, Danny looked up. Plasmius stepped through the portal, both hands aglow and a deadly look in his eye. Danny tried to get up, but his legs turned into jelly. He fell back down on his knees, he had no strength to try again.

Vlad smirked.

“Oh Daniel, you don’t even have the strength to face me standing. It’s over. You’re finished. All your resistance did is gave me the privilege of killing off three generations of Fentons under the same roof.”

Vlad took a step closer. Danny tried to generate enough energy for a ghost ray, but there wasn’t even enough in him for a spark. He let his hand drop to the ground, then almost immediately needed both to hold himself up. His head was swimming, but he couldn’t allow himself to black out. He had to do something to get out of this, but what could he do? His powers were drained, he couldn’t even stand up. The hopelessness of his situation started to sink in, overwhelming the part of him that pushed for his survival. This was the end, Vlad was going to kill him. He was going to die within hours of his parents murder, and within moments of his Ophelia’s end.

No, he couldn’t let that happen. He can’t go out and let all his efforts to save his daughter be done in vain. He won’t let her die.

And with this new determination, something in him swelled. Something he knew well, something powerful.

“Get away from us.” Danny warned. Vlad couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh please, Daniel, like your pitiful threats will sway me now.”

“I said….GET AWAY!”  
Just like that, his scream turned into one of his most powerful attacks: the Ghostly Wail. Even in his weakened state, he could feel the Wail shake the house at its very foundation. Vlad was almost immediately knocked off his feet, sliding across the room towards the portal. Vlad tried to stop, failing to find any part of the smooth, slick floor to hold onto. He stopped halfway into the portal by grabbing the frame of the doorway he had just smashed through. He wasn't going to be able to hold on for long, certainly not long enough to wait through the Wail. He wasn't going to let himself to be screamed out of the Human Plane. One of his friends let go of the frame, glowing magenta with his ghost energy. He stretched out his arm to Danny, aiming in hope to silence the former Ghost Boy. But just when he was charged and ready to make the shot, his aim lowered. He was now aiming at Ophelia's heart.

He fired the shot.

As the ray went off, Vlad smiled. There was no way he would hit anything more than the dead center of his target. And that he did.

 Which caused a greater shock to him to see the ray bounce back towards him. The shot hit the hand still holding onto the frame. The pain of his own ghost ray made him lose his grip and he was sent back into the Ghost Zone.

So sooner than had Plasmius disappeared, the Fenton Portal had finally broken down by the force of the Ghostly Wail. The panel on the side was sparking, resisting its imminent demise. The red light on top blew out with a loud _pop!_ The panel made the same noise in a chorus before the sparks disappeared and it quieted. The green swirl of the inside the portal, the small window into the Ghost Zone, slowly faded. Fenton Portal II was dead, all that was left was a fancy hole in the wall.

Just like when he was a kid, Danny had drained himself with the Ghostly Wail and involuntarily transformed back to Fenton. He fell back, having no more energy to sit up. He tried to will himself back up, but couldn't even do so much as move his pinky. The room kept moving, with colorful spots dancing all around... He heard the heavy pound of feet descending down the stairs...Screams that he couldn't quite understand...

Everything went black. 

* * *

 

Sam had just watched the coroner load her in-laws bodies into his truck when a violently loud noise blared through. The whole block seemed to be shaking as though caught in the world smallest earthquake. She recognized her husband’s Ghostly Wail anywhere.

“Danny!” She cried.

Without a second thought, she ran straight to the source of the noise. She could hear Tucker and Valerie screaming behind her, telling her to wait a moment, it could be dangerous. She took no heed to them, he husband was down there, and maybe even her daughter.

By the time she got there, the Wail had stopped. Danny had just transformed from Phantom to Fenton and collapsed onto his back, out cold and utterly exhausted. He had a cut on his face, and she could see blood oozing from his shoulder underneath his shirt. She would’ve gone over to get a closer look at him, but her eye was drawn by shape in front of Danny, partially covered by his coat.

“Ophelia!”

She ran straight to her and knelt down in front of her. Her heart stopped the very moment she got a good look at Ophelia. All the air went out of her lungs in the form of a blood-curdling scream.

“MY BABY!”

It was no sooner did Tucker and Valerie catch up with her and were at the bottom of the stairs. Tucker went to Danny’s side to check if he was still alive, while Valerie went to Sam’s to respond to her screams.

“Sam! Are you okay? What happened?”

“That monster! Look what he did to my baby!” Sam realized by how she had to choke out the words that she was crying.

Sam didn’t look away from her child, she couldn’t, but she knew when Valerie saw by the sound of her gasp.

“Oh my god.” She practically whispered.

Without warning, the house started shaking again. Cracks were climbing all over the walls and ceiling and pieces were falling out all around.

“The house is coming down!” said Valerie. “We have to get out of here!”

It took a while for it to phase Sam, she was too far deep in shock to understand the immediate danger. She was frozen in place, eyes glued to the horror that had befallen her child.

“Sam? Sam, snap out of it! We have to get out of here!”

“Sam!” cried Tucker, “We have to get Danny and Ophelia out of here! Don’t just sit there!”

Somehow that snapped her out of it. Wasting no time, she scooped up Ophelia wrapped in her husband’s coat and got on her feet.

“You guys get Danny, I’ve got Ophelia.” She said as she ran straight for the stairs. One hand held her child tightly to her while the other hung onto the railing, making sure that the house’s shaking won’t throw her back down the stairs. In no time, she was out the front door and down the stairs. She didn’t stop until she got the nearest ambulance truck, called in and ready in case someone got hurt, though they never expected anything like this.

“She needs to get to a hospital fast!” she told the EMT as she handed him Ophelia. After the initial shock of seeing her injuries, the EMT gave a nod of understanding and started prepping Ophelia for transport.

Sam turned back to the house. She kept her fingers crossed and started to worry when Valerie and Tucker didn’t come out yet. Panic took over when large cracks start to appear from the base of the house. Just when the first floor was about to collapse, she saw Tucker and Valerie heading out the door, lugging out the still unconscious Danny Fenton by his arms and legs. No sooner than they reached the bottom step, the first floor fell away, followed by the second floor and finally the emergency OP center sunk in through the roof. The rest of the total destruction of the Fenton house was concealed in a curtain of dust and debris. Sam had to shut her eyes and cover her mouth protect herself from said curtain. When all seemed to have settled, she opened her eyes.

As long as she knew Danny, and that was practically all her life, she had always known the Fenton house. It had been more of a home to her than the house she grew up in. It was a place she thought would be around forever, in any shape or form. Which made is all the more incredulous and all the more devastating to see it gone in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing left but a pile of rubble with a broken “Fenton Work’s” on top.

“Miss? Excuse me, Miss?”

Sam came out of her trance when someone put a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see it was the EMT.

“We need to rushed you daughter to the hospital immediately if she has any chance. If you want to ride with her, you’ll have to do it now.”

“My husband…”

She saw Danny was lying on the ground near the sidewalk. Valerie and Tucker seemed to be checking his vitals, making sure he’s still fine.

“There’s another bus coming to take him. We’re running out of time, are you coming or not?”

With a dazed look, Sam gave the EMT a half-spirited not and stepped into the ambulance truck.

“Val, Tuck,” She shouted out to them, “I’m going with Ophelia, take care of Danny!”

She couldn’t see whether or not they heard before the doors close on her and the ambulance started moving. Although she knew that Danny had came out of fights looking a lot worse than he did there, Sam still worried for him. He will be fine, she told herself, he’s always fine. She then turned her attention back to the one who really needed it.

“Miss? Could you take this please?”

The EMT had removed something from around Ophelia’s neck and handed it to Sam. “The thing was covering her whole upper torso, it would’ve gotten in the way of her heart in case I needed to perform CPR.”

Sam looked down at it and her vision immediately blurred from her tears. It was Maddie’s haz-mat goggles. She could hardly believe that it was only hours ago when Maddie had given them to Ophelia as an early Christmas present, and when she had put Ophelia to bed with these still around her neck. The only difference between how they looked then and now was a huge crack in the left eye.

As the EMT explained her Ophelia’s condition and told her every single thing he was doing as he was doing it, Sam held onto her daughter’s limp hand.

“It’s okay, honey,” she told Ophelia, as if the girl could hear her, “Mommy’s here. Just stay with me, Ophelia, please. Everything’s going to be okay, just stay with me. Everything’s going to be okay.”

 


	8. Briar Rose

She heard the news on the plane ride over, and she felt a cold numbness for the rest of the flight. As soon as they landed, she went straight to the hospital where her brother and her niece were being treated. When she got there, the entrance to the hospital was riddled with press. There were police officers working along with security to keep them out. She didn’t even reach the front steps before one of the reporters spotted her and She was flooded with questions.

“What have you heard about the incident that has happened at the Fenton house?” “Have you heard anything about your brother’s condition?”

“Is it true that your niece is under intensive care?”  
She ignored them as she tried to convince security to let her in. Out of all the people shouting at her, none of them said anything worth hearing.  
We’re sorry for your loss.  
Will you be okay?  
Merry Christmas.

When she got to the room, her brother was asleep and his wife was at his side, looking at him with sleepless red eyes that were cried dry. She barely even noticed her coming into the room and pulling a seat next to her.

“Hey Jazz,” Sam said with a distant voice.  
“Hey,” Jazz said back. “So, how are they doing?”

“Danny drained himself pretty badly flying the two of them back to Earth. His Ghostly Wail burned through whatever energy he had left and knocked him out.

He's under observation with the standard drip...”   
“And Ophelia?”

“Still in surgery…they’re removing the roots under her skin. I haven’t heard anything else about her condition…”

Sam was quiet for a moment. Jazz could practically feel the swelling emotions Sam was trying to push down to continue her thought.   
“… who could do that to a child?”

“We know who,” Jazz said, trying to keep a steady, calm tone in her voice, “ Someone who is beyond all help. Someone who sees his deeds as an act of retribution.”

Sam’s eyes stayed on Danny. Jazz saw the tears welling up.

“She had never done anything to him. She didn’t even know he _existed_. Why would he think she’d done anything to deserve…”

Jazz pulled her into a hug. Sam almost immediately began to cry. Hardly ever did she ever see Sam cry, the last time being five years ago when Sam’s grandmother passed away. She didn't let anyone see her during that time, even Danny had to put up a fight to get her to open up to him. Her crying this openly just showed how hard this hit Sam. And frankly, she had every right to.

Although Jazz knew she hated this kind of contact, she stroked Sam's hair in a soothing way.

"It's okay," Jazz told her, "it's all going to be okay."

"You haven't seen her," Sam argued, "what he did to her. She was in there for _hours,_ crying out for us and I wasn't there. The doctors say that if she was there any longer, she wouldn't have survived. I close to losing my baby by a matter of _seconds._ I should've been there, Jazz, I should've stayed at the house with them."

"If you stayed at the house, Ophelia would've lost her mother along with her grandparents." Jazz said to her, "And what if he thought the wife makes a better hostage than the child? You and Danny will always look back to that night and think what would happen if you did things differently. You can't let yourself do that, Sam. What's happened happened and wishing for it to have gone differently won't change it. You must put yourself in the here and now, and right now you've got a husband and child who need you."

Sam lifted her head from Jazz's shoulder and looked at her. Jazz could see that she wanted to give a smile, some small indication that she had heard her words and will be okay, but she didn't have it in her to feign such hope. Instead, she let her true thoughts show through.

"I'm going to kill him." Sam said, in a voice just above a whisper, "If I ever see that man again, I'm going to kill him. He doesn't deserve to live after what he's done."

Jazz took both of Sam's hands and looked her in the eye.

“I don’t think anyone would blame you, or stop you. I certainly wouldn’t, if you had the chance. But you should really let the Law take care of him.”

“The Law? The same law that let this happen? That tried to destroy my baby before she could even be born? The same law that tried to destroy the entire Ghost Zone, not even thinking that it would affect our world too? The Law doesn’t care, Jazz, no matter how hard I work to fix it.”

“They may not care about one half ghost attacking another, but they will care about the man who nearly destroyed the world and killed two human beings. Now that they know he’s still alive, they’ll be tracking him down.”  
“And even if they do catch him, they won’t give him what he deserves. The Law lacks imagination, and he’s got a very vivid one. He can talk his way out of anything.” Sam’s eyes filled with more hatred that Jazz had ever seen in her. Through gritted teeth, she said “He might even convince them what he did to her was self-defense.”

“Sam, she’s four years old. No matter what people think about ghosts, there is no way Vlad could get anyone to believe that he was endangered by a four-year-old.”

Sam stared out blankly at the still sleeping Danny, holding his hand. It was quite clear that she had stopped listening to her. Once Jazz decided that she wouldn’t get anywhere with Sam right now, the whole plane ride without sleep finally hit her.

“I’m going to grab some coffee,” said Jazz, “you want me to bring anything back for you?”

Sam said nothing, rubbing the top of Danny’s hand with her thumb.

“Okay, I’ll bring you a cup if I find something closely resembling coffee around here.”

Jazz left Sam in the room. After asking a nurse where she could find a cafeteria, she headed to an elevator.

“Hey, you’re Jasmine Fenton.”

She barely turned her head to the guy standing next to her. He wasn’t wearing scrubs, he wasn’t wearing any kind of professional attire, there was no indication in his appearance or facial expression implied he was visiting a patient, or at least one he actually cared about. This left her with two possible options, he was either visiting one of the staff, or he was a reporter who found his way inside.   
“Yes, that’s me.” She said in a dull tone.

“I heard what happened to your family, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, that’s very nice.”

“Did you hear anything about your brother or your niece?”  
“They’re still alive.”

He appeared to be taken aback at the cold response.

“Well, that’s good, right? I hope that kid comes out okay, she looked so adorable from the pictures they showed on TV. I wish them the best in their recovery.”

After a few moments and a couple of impatient button pushes later, he started up again.

“So, who do you think did it?”  
Jazz paused and took a deep, calming breath.

“Where are you from?”

“Amity Park.”

“No, I mean what paper are you from?”

Like a child caught in the act, he sheepishly looked away before answering.  
“The Herald”

“Look, I understand that it is your job to get the story as fast and as best you can. You might think what you’re doing will be perfectly justified once the readers hear about our tragic story and instill some kind of change in society, but in reality all anyone is going to see is some slimy bottom feeding parasite using invading a family’s privacy during their greatest tragedy so you can exploit their misery to your personal gain.

 "I don’t know your name yet, and I have yet to memorize your face. If you leave this hospital now and leave my brother and his family alone I’ll pretend this never happened. If you don’t, or if I see you in this hospital again, I will get your name, I will memorize your face and not only will I have security escort you out of the building but I will call the Herald about this incident. Do you understand?”

He gave her a quick nod. Just then, the elevator opened. Jazz stepped in first. The reporter tried to enter but she raised her hand to block him.

“You’re not riding with me.”  
“How else do you expect me to leave the hospital?”

“Take the stairs.”

The elevator doors closed on him. She pushed the button for the floor the cafeteria was on. She was alone inside the elevator, and it was a little ways down. She wasn’t expecting to use this small window of privacy, but the pain and grief became too much to hold in. Before she knew it she had crumbled to the ground sobbing. 

* * *

 Valerie had the files spread out all over the bed. She had read every single document and inspected every single photo a hundred times over but yet she couldn’t keep her eyes away from them. She was lying on her stomach, face the edge of the bed, checking every bit of the evidence for flaws. She didn’t pay attention when her husband came into the room, or even hear when he said he had put Francis to bed and started talking about his day. She hardly noticed when he straddled himself over her lower back, though she did enjoy him rubbing her shoulders.

“What did you say the success rate of your prototype was again?” She asked him while she looked over the data.

“You already asked me this.”

“I need to make sure it won’t get thrown out in court. He disabled the security system and shut off the cameras before he entered the Fenton house, your prototype might be the only proof we have that he was in the house.”

“What about the two witness testimonies from Danny and Ophelia?”

“Any lawyer Vlad can buy can discredit Danny and say he’s making it up to get arch-enemy put away. And Ophelia…” she felt a catch in her throat. A twinge of pain came from deep within her heart and her eyes were stinging.

“We don’t even know if she’ll ever wake up.”

Tucker got her to sit up so he could hold her.   
“It’s okay, it’s just me. Let it out.”

She didn’t like it when he held her, it made her feel like a child. But she knew that he only does it to comfort her and for his own sake as well, so she would let him hold her once in a while. This wasn’t once in a while.

She pushed him away.  
“I’m fine, I need to get back to work.”

She lied back down and looked at the list of properties under Vlad’s name. Tucker stayed sitting for a moment before lying in the spot next to her.

“You’ve been looking at the same papers for a week now, there’s nothing new to find. Besides, we need to find him before we can put him on trial.”

“That’s why I should keep working, so we can find him.” Valerie got out of bed, making her way to her coat where she left her phone. “It shouldn’t be too late to call GZPD. Maybe they have an update on their half of the Vlad search.”

Tucker snatched the phone out of her hand and turned it off.

“Valerie, you need to give yourself a break.”

“No, I don’t. Give it back.”

 She reached out to grab the phone out of his hand, but he extended it out of her reach.  
“Yes, you do. You haven’t given yourself a full night’s rest since you took up this case, and I have to practically drag you to the table to eat. Have you even paid any attention to Francis since Christmas?”

Valerie was about to answer, but couldn’t think of anything for her defense. Instead, she elbowed him in the stomach to make him release her phone.

“I don’t have time for this-“

“You don’t have time for anything anymore. You’ve let your work life take over. It’s like you were replaced by one of the android projects I bring home.”

“Maybe you should go bother the androids and leave me alone.”  
“I don’t want a machine, I want you.”  
“Well, you can’t have me right now. Not until Vlad is caught and we are all safe."

"Don't you think I want that too? Danny and Sam, we grew up together. I practically lived at the Fenton Works. Jack and Maddie were like a second set of parents to me. If anything, I want him put put away more than you."

"Don't you dare assume what I want! Just because I haven't known them as long doesn't mean I don't care about them any less. Sam and I took the same classes when we were pregnant and we were there for each other when our babies were born, and you know Sam's turn wasn't exactly conventional. Jack and Maddie watched over our son when we had to work. I mean, we almost left Francis with them _that night!"_

"Instead, you left him at home while you went out on patrols."

"You make it sound like I left him alone. I left him with my dad."

"We had an agreement, Valerie. You promised to stay home and watch Francis while I went to search the Colorado house. You couldn’t stop being a cop for _one night_ to take care of our son!"

“If I had stayed home that night I wouldn’t have been there to discover the bodies and you and Danny would’ve never gotten back on time. If I hadn’t gone out that night, Danny would have been too late and Ophelia wouldn’t be alive right now. Please, just let me do my job, she needs me.”  
“She doesn’t need you. _We_ need you. Francis needs his mother to tuck him into bed and tell him that the monsters aren’t real. I need my wife to remind me that I'm not going through this alone. You’re hurting, I know you are, I’m hurting too. Just please, let me in. I was okay with it when you would do this before because I knew as soon as you got off of work you’d be the real Valerie Gray, the one I married. Don’t shut that part of yourself now. Let it out.”

 It was getting harder for Valerie to hold back the tears, but yet she managed it. She turned away from him and went back to the bed with all of her files.

“I’ll let it out when Vlad is behind bars.”

She didn’t see Tucker’s face, but she had a good idea how he felt when he snatched the papers out of her hands and the rest from the bed.  
“Hey!”

“I’ve had it with these stupid papers! I’ve had it with you never listening to a word I say! You’re driving the both of us insane obsessing over this case, can’t you see that? It’s not healthy.”

Valerie grabbed at the papers but Tucker wasn’t letting them go. It soon became a tug-of-war over the files.

“Give them back! You’re being crazy!”

“No I’m not, if one of us was crazy it would be you!”

Both lost grip of the papers and they were both thrown back by each other’s force. The paper flew all across the room, a mockery of the snow falling outside. Valerie watched the papers fly with sheer rage, which she soon focused on her husband.

“Look at this mess! It’s going to take me hours to put all of these papers back into order!”  
She got up in order to start cleaning up the mess but she was just too angry to try.

Instead, she turned her attention back to her husband.

“What is wrong with you! It's not like I'm cheating on you!"

“You _are_ cheating on me. I’m being cuckolded by your career!”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“You’re right, I got it backwards. You’re married to the job and have been _cheating on it with me!_ You don’t care about me or Francis, you only pay attention to us when it is convenient for you. We could be replaced with a pair of cats and you would never tell the difference.”

Before she could respond, the door opened. Francis timidly poked his head into the room.

“Mommy? Daddy?”

“Francis, baby, what are you doing out of bed?”

“I heard shouting, are you and Daddy fighting?”

She and Tucker exchanged looks before answering.

“Of course not, baby.”

“It’s about Ophelia, isn’t it? Auntie Sam and Uncle Danny haven’t been happy either. Why won’t she wake up?”

“She’s really tired, she’s been through a lot.” Tucker explained, “She’ll wake up eventually.”

“Hopefully” she whispered under her breath.

“She should wake up soon, I miss playing with her.”

“We miss her too,” Tucker said, “but that’s no excuse for you to be up so late. Go back to your room, I’ll be right there to tuck you back in in a second.”

Francis gave a small nod and disappeared behind the door. Tucker turned back to Valerie.

“If you want to be left alone, fine. But eventually, you’ll look up from your papers and find yourself in an empty house.”

Tucker left the room and shut the door behind him. 

* * *

Danny had woken up two days after he was admitted, and after a few hours of tests he was discharged from the hospital. However, he never left, and neither did Sam. They would spend as many hours as the doctors allowed by their daughter’s bedside, hoping that any moment now she’ll wake up. She had gone two months without ever doing so.

The state of her was painful for Danny and Sam to look at, but they never pulled their eyes from her. The surgeries managed to get enough of the blossoms out of her as not to kill her, but they weren’t completely gone. Danny could remember every word the doctors told him about her condition, even if he didn’t completely understand it. They had biopsied various tissues and taken blood and lymph samples. Everything they put under the microscope had trances of them in some form, mostly as plant cells comingling with her own cells and feeding off the ghost energy.

They had put her on daily dialysis treatments to try to get the cells out of her blood, but it proved futile within a week as the cells would have replenished themselves by the end of the day. They took her off dialysis for a couple of days to see what would happen. Once the cells retuned to their original count, they seemed to have slowed down multiplication. It was as if the blossoms were perfectly aware of themselves, controlling themselves so it wouldn’t kill the girl. They were like a living parasite, an intelligent one at that. Keeping the host alive so it could continue to feed on her ghost energy.

Or maybe it was Ophelia's body adjusting to the parasitic plants, keeping it in check. Perhaps that means she'll be able to recover on her own, at least enough that she'll soon wake up. Danny knew that setting his hopes so high would only lead to heartbreak, but he couldn't help it. Neither did Sam. They both wanted her to wake up, if only there was something they could do to help.

One day, while they were both sitting by her bedside, one of the doctors came in.

"Mr. And Mrs. Fenton?" Said the doctor in place of a formal greeting.

Neither him nor Sam bothered to confirm who they were, nor did they greet him.

"Anything new, doctor?" Sam asked with strained hope in her voice.

"Sadly, no, she doesn't seem to be getting any better. But she isn't getting any worse either, that's at least something."

"If you have nothing new to tell us, then why are you here?" Danny asked, tired and impatient.

The doctor nervously fumbled with his clipboard. That's when Danny noticed how young this doctor was. He couldn't be any older than him or Sam, but he didn't seem as unexperienced as the interns he would see walk around the halls from time to time.

"Well, I understand what you must be going through right now. Everyone here in South Mercy are hoping, some even praying for her recovery. We have this cute little nickname for her. At first it was a kind of code so we could talk about her without the press catching on, but then I guess it kind of stuck…Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that she grew on us, and we are all doing what we can to help her recover…but I don’t think it’s enough.”

Danny looked over to Sam. Just like him, she knew this doctor wanted something but tried to mask it to be polite. Their suspicions were all but confirmed with how long the doctor took. He knew they weren’t going to like whatever he was offering but he was going to ask it anyway, Danny supposed that he could respect him for that.

“I believe that if we have your daughter’s condition published in a medical journal-“

“Absolutely not!” Danny exclaimed. “You are not turning my daughter into a freak show.”

“Please, Mr. Fenton, if you could only hear me out-“

“No, you are no different from those vulture reporters staking outside your doors trying to exploit my family’s pain for their benefit. She will wake up one day, and when she does I don’t want her to go on the rest of her life being seen as nothing more than some creature with a rare disease.”

“But Mr. Fenton, you need to understand. If we get attention for your child’s condition, doctors from all over will volunteer to help find a cure. Although most of them would only be doing it to boost their reputation, she’ll still be cured. Someone out there might even find a way to eliminate her scars. Wouldn’t you want her to live her life without having a constant reminder of your family’s tragedy stare back at her in the mirror every day?”

“You would be giving every medical professional in the country permission to treat my daughter like a lab rat.”

He felt a tug on his arm. He looked down to find Sam looking back at him. She was gesturing him to hold for a sec. She turned to the doctor.

“Do you really think people will want to help?”

The young doctor tried to give her a confident, reassuring smile, but his timidity botched the attempt.   
“Anyone would want to help, Mrs. Fenton, no one wants to see a child suffer.”

“Clearly, there are some people who don’t see her as a child.”

"Clearly, those won't be the people treating your child. You're the parents, you have all the power here. You will get to choose who will be allowed to treat your daughter and no method will be used without your approval. The only thing this will do is bring attention to this problem so people can start coming up with solutions. I can't publish this without your permission, and I'm not going to pressure you into doing this, but in my opinion this is the best option we have for finding a cure."

No matter what the doctor said, Danny could only see one thing: strangers experimenting on his daughter. He had thought they were safe from that after Ophelia was born, but this might start it all over again. Whatever doctors come their way, claiming to want to help them, could try to take advantage of their tragedy to do all but dissect the girl. He would rather be torn apart than let that happen.  
Molecule by molecule.

 “Okay”

Both Danny and the young doctor gave Sam the most baffling of looks.

“What?”

She looked at them both with that boldness that Danny knew and loved, and at times feared.   
“Okay,” she said again, “You can publish the case. But Danny and I have to read it first before you send it off.”

The doctor’s look of surprise held for a moment. He seemed to not believe her, with Danny that made two. When the doctor realized that Sam was in fact serious, a smile spread on his face not unlike a child’s upon hearing that they can get the puppy in the pet store window.   
“Of course,” said the young doctor, almost eagerly, “I was hoping to have you read it first. With the amount of press coverage you have all been receiving, it would probably be refreshing to have a say in what the public reads about you.”

“There are other conditions, too, which I will write up when my husband and I get home. We can discuss them once you have a draft put together.”  
“Absolutely, and I believe neither me nor the hospital will have any issues accepting your terms.”

“I’m glad to hear that. If you have any news on Ophelia’s condition, please let us know.”

“Of course, that’s part of my job. Thank you, Mrs. Fenton, thank you both.”

“No, thank you Dr…”

It seemed to have finally hit the young doctor that he had not given them his name. Nervous, and a little embarrassed, he stuck out his hand.

“Oh, sorry, it’s Grahm. Dr. James Grahm.”

Sam shook his hand, her other hand staying clasped around the limp tiny one of her child’s.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. James Grahm. It will be a pleasure working with you, won’t it Danny?”

Danny was a little startled to hear his own name in the conversation. He looked at the hand being offered to him and then at the Dr. James Grahm it belonged to.

“Yeah, a real treat.” He said rather coldly, not even bothering to shake his hand, “Could you leave us?”

Dr. Grahm let his hand drop with an almost scared look in his eye.

“Oh, um, yes, sure, of course.”

And with that, the young Dr. Grahm left. Danny shut the door to their room and turned to Sam. She had returned her attention back to Ophelia, as if she had never taken it off her.

“Okay, what was that?”

“What was what?” she replied, not taking her eyes off her daughter.

“How could you agree to that?”

“To what? Asking for help with our daughter’s condition?”

“To giving the whole world an opportunity they can take advantage of.”

Sam shot him an irritated look.

“I’m not going to let that happen. We’re going to have every doctor screened and get a full background check before they even meet with us. I know what I’m doing Danny, I have the exact same fears as you.”

“Are you sure about that? You’re putting our daughter’s life on display in some ill-fated hope at finding a cure. They’re going to spend half of her life just on her biology alone before even going near the flowers. It’ll be like when I had that kidney stone and the doctors tried to vivisect me. And I don’t want to even want to think about what the OB-GYNs tried to do to you when you were pregnant.”

“I’m not expecting to find a cure overnight, but we need to at least try. We owe it to Ophelia to do whatever we can for her.”

“We also owe it to her to not end up in a jar in some creepy Ripley museum.”

“It’s not like she’ll find any better treatment in the Ghost Zone.”

“I don’t trust anyone with our daughter, Sam, human or ghost. Either they want to exploit her or destroy her, just like they did with me.”

“Not everyone is like that, Danny. They could’ve turned us out of the hospital and let her die, but they didn’t. She could’ve gotten transferred to some Bureau facility, but she’s still here. They see her just as we see her: an innocent little girl who needs help. And if an entire hospital staff can see that, then there must be other people who will too. People who might have a cure we may never find on our own."

"We don't need help, we can take care of this ourselves. We always had before."

"We always had your parents with some miraculous invention to help us. They are gone, Danny, all of that is gone."

The very thought of his parents sent a shooting pain deep within his heart. Sam seemed to have felt the same, from what he could tell by that hollow look in her lilac eyes. She fell quiet for a moment before returning to her argument.

"We can't kid ourselves on this, we can't handle this on our own. We need help, and if it means trudging through the slime then so be it. Trust me, I don't like this either. Every part of me is squirming at the thought of having so many people prodding at her, possibly prodding us as well. But I have to think of our daughter. We need to take whatever option we are given if it helps her, especially since we have so few of them. But I'm not going to be naive about this. I'm going to take every precaution. It’s not like they are going to do anything without our permission. We have a right as her parents to say no, that doesn’t change because of who you are or what she is. I’m going to do this no matter what you say, and I’m not expecting you to like this, but I would like it if you support me on this.”

Sam leaned over to the other side of the bed and took Ophelia’s hand, the one that she wasn’t already holding. She lifted it up carefully, as if it were the most fragile thing in the world.

“I know Ophelia would feel much safer if she had both of her parents there to hold her hand.”

Danny looked at the tiny hand. Just like with every other part of her body, scars left from the blood blossoms marred the Ophelia’s soft, young skin. They even wrapped around each of the fingers like twine. Burns from where the flowers touched her left such a perfect impression that it was almost as if they were painted on. He couldn’t help but think of how painful they look every time he saw them, and how it must feel for Ophelia, or how it will feel when she wakes up. Yet her hand sat there limp and relaxed in her mother’s palm, showing no signs of discomfort despite the scars. Danny had heard once that people are perfectly aware of their surroundings while in a coma. He’d think about it whenever he held her hand or when he or Sam read her stories. But then whenever he saw those scars, he really hoped that it wasn’t true.

What will happen when she wakes up? Will she still be in pain from the scars? Will she still have her powers? If she didn’t have them immediately, will she ever get them back? Will the scars be easier to look at, or will it look the same as it does today ten years from now?

What is he going to do when she wakes up?

He looked up at and locked eyes with Sam. She was trying to look headstrong, which she most certainly was, but he knew her too well. Under all that, she was asking for him to say she was making the right choice. She wanted his support not because she didn’t want him in her way, she needed him so she wouldn’t have to do this alone.

Danny crouched at the other side of the bed and took Ophelia’s hand. He rubbed his thumb over the backside of her hand towards the wrist, feeling the bumpiness of her icy skin cause by the scars.

“I don’t trust anyone with Ophelia,” he said, “But I do trust you. If you think this is our best option, I believe you, and I’ll be right there with you through it all.”

Sam smiled, a tear went down her cheek. The fingers of his and Sam’s free hands interlocked as they leaned over the bed to kiss each other. When they finally pulled away they leaned their heads against one another’s and looked down at Ophelia.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered.

“What else can we do?” Danny replied. “We wait until she wakes up”

He felt Sam squeeze his hand.

“If she ever wakes up.”

* * *

 

 Francis was left alone the hospital room. His godparents were talking with doctors and his real parents were out somewhere where he couldn’t hear them fighting. They’ve been like this ever since his god sister gotten those weird marks that made her fall asleep. They may not do it in front of him, but he can still hear it from his room. They would fight about different things, but there was one thing that came up over and over again: Ophelia. How could she make his mom and dad so mad at each other when she’s not even awake? How could she be asleep for so long, anyway? Whenever he asked his mom or his dad what was wrong with her they could never give him a real answer. Something bad happened to her. She got hurt and needed to sleep it off. No one bothered to explain to him what those weird beeping machines were for, or the tubes and wires stuck all over her. 

And who was this Vlad guy the grown ups keep whispering about?  
Just then, someone stuck his head into the doorway. It was a boy, as old as Francis and Ophelia. He was wearing the clothes he’d see the other kids wear in the part of the hospital with all the toys. The boy didn’t spot Francis yet, he was staring straight at Ophelia.

“Hello?” Francis said.

The little boy jumped and turned to Francis, his eyes almost as big as his head.

“Hello” the boy said with a raspy voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see Briar Rose.”

“Who?”

The little boy pointed to Ophelia, still asleep in her bed.

“I heard the nurses and doctors talk about this little girl and this curse that gave her flowers that put her to sleep. They call her Briar Rose, like the fairytale.”

“Fairytale?”

“Your mommy never read you fairytales?”  
“She used to, but now it’s my daddy’s job.”  
“And they never read you Briar Rose? My mommy reads it to me all the time.”

Francis shook his head. The boy smiled and took the opportunity to tell it with his funny voice.

“So there was a king and queen who really wanted a baby. When they finally had one, they were so happy they threw a huge party for everyone in the kingdom. They even invited all their fairy friends, well all except one?”

“Why wasn’t the one fairy invited? Was that one evil?”

“No, not really, not any more than the other fairies. Fairies only eat off of special gold plates and the King and Queen didn’t have enough to invite all of them. Anyway, at the party, the fairies who were invited all gave the baby a special magic gift. Before the last one could give their gift, the fairy that didn’t get invited showed up and cursed the baby to get back at her mommy and daddy. The curse had it that if the baby grew up and pricked her finger on a spindle-“

“What’s a spindle?”

“I don’t know, something pointy. If the princess ever pricked herself on one she would die. That was the angry fairy’s curse. But then the last fairy, the one who had yet to give their gift, used their magic to help the baby.”

“Did they lift the curse?”

“No, it was too strong to do that, but they did manage to change it so the princess won’t die. Instead, she would only fall asleep for a hundred years. The king didn’t like it either way, so he ordered every spindle in the kingdom to be destroyed. But the mean fairy had their own spindle, and got the princess to prick herself on it when she grew up. When the princess fell asleep, the whole kingdom did as well, and the castle became tangled in these thorns and roses, which was funny since that was the princess’ name, Briar Rose.”

“So then what happened?”

The little boy shrugged.

“She swept, everyone slept. There were some people from other kingdoms who would try to wake her up, but they never made it past the thorns. Eventually, one hundred years passed. One prince managed to cut through the roses and kissed the princess right when her curse wore out. They thought it was the prince who did it so she married him and they lived happily ever after.”

Francis waited a few moments before he realized that the boy wasn’t going to tell anymore.  
“That’s it?” Francis asked, almost indignantly. The little boy nodded.

“That is a horrible story.”

“It’s a good story.”

“No it’s not, some fairy nearly killed a little girl just because her parents didn’t have enough plates? Is that really what they call my god-sister?”

“It’s what they call her.” The little boy said, once again pointing to Ophelia.

“Why, do they think she’s going to sleep for a hundred years?”

The little boy shrugged.  
“I don’t know, grown ups are weird.”

At that moment, Francis’ mom came in. She looked like she was trying to make herself stop being angry, her fight with Francis’ dad must have really made her mad.

“Francis, honey, come on. We’re going to go down to have some lunch.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

Francis hopped off his seat and followed his mother out of the room, leaving the little boy alone. He was going to leave, but he was too curious about the Little Briar Rose and decided to stay. He walked up to her and looked at the beeping machines. He saw a lot of grown ups hooked onto to these things, but he never saw any of the other children with so many wires and tubes stuck to them. He looked at the little girl with the bright pink roses on her face. Her inky hair covered most of her face, but he could still see her eyelids closed and her lips slightly parted. She was sleeping peacefully, just like the little girl in his story.

Suddenly, the eyes tightened and a little sound came out of her lips. The little boy took a step back in surprise. She opened her eyes and he saw them dart around the room. She pulled herself up in a sitting position. Her eyes then fell onto the little boy, they shined a brighter green than any other set of eyes he had seen on the other children. They looked like his mother’s jewelry shining against the sunlight.

“Where’s my mommy and daddy?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why am I in the hospital?”

“You were asleep for too long, I think. I like your flowers, they’re pretty.”

Her eyes flashed a paler shade of green.

“What flowers?”

She looked around until she saw her arms. She felt them to see if they were real, they were. She ran her hands up her arms until she reached her face, they felt the same as the arms. The scars were there, that nightmare was real.

Tears streamed down her marred face and she screamed. She cried like all children her age cried, a strange cross between sobbing and screaming. But yet it was all the more painful. Somehow, the little boy could tell that there was something more to her crying than anything he’s seen little girls cry over. The nurses flooded in with the doctors.

“She’s awake,” said the doctor, she turned to the closest nurse. “Go get the family.”

The doctor finally noticed the little boy in the corner.

“Get that kid out of here!” She told another one of the nurses.

The nurse led the little boy out of the room. He looked back and tried to see the little girl, but there were too many people in the way. A doctor walked up to the nurse and the little boy.

“Owen, what are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be in bed.”

“We found he in Briar Rose’s room.” Said the nurse. “I was just taking him back to Pediatrics.”

The doctor looked from the nurse back to the boy.

“You went to see her? I told you not to.”

“Sorry, Dr. Abi’s Mom.”

“Oh, you will be when your mother hears about this.” The doctor took the boy from the nurse and walked him back to the pediatric wing. He never heard about the Briar Rose girl since then, no matter how much he asked about her. Once he was finally discharged and taken home, it was a matter of time before he forgot about the girl altogether.   


	9. Hallowed Ground

The next day, after her discharge from the hospital, Danny and Sam took Ophelia to the cemetery. She slept through the funeral, and frankly they were glad for it. As much as they would want her to see her grandparents one last time, they were worried what would happen if she were to see her lifeless bodies and he reminded once again of what happened on that horrible night. They wanted to spare her from as much pain as they could, since it was practically all she felt now. Still, she did deserve to say goodbye to them.

She sat there between the two graves, staring perplexed at the names etched into the headstones. She then turned to look back at her parents.

"Where's grandma and grandpa?" she asked.

"They're- they're under the stones, sweetie." Sam told her.

Ophelia stared down at the mound of earth, too fresh for any grass to grow.

"Why are they in the ground, Mommy?"

"Well, it's what you do when someone dies." she said, trying to hide her sadness. "You bury them."

“Or cremate them.” Said Danny, trying not to let his grief show as well.

Ophelia looked back at the headstones. 

“Can I go pick flowers for them? I saw some on the way over.”

“Sure thing, sweetie.” Danny said with a somewhat forced smile.

Ophelia smiled as she picked herself up and toddled off down the hill. 

“She doesn’t understand, does she?” Sam said as she watched Ophelia wander around the graves.

“No, she must think that they’re ghosts are coming soon.”

“I don’t think she even realizes that they’re dead, Danny.”

“Of course she does, she…she saw it for herself.”

Sam was quiet. If it were anyone else, they wouldn’t have known what was going on in her head with her indifferent stare into oblivion. But this was Danny, the man who knew her as well as she did. He knew she was hurting just as much as he was.  
She turned away from the hill and walked over to her in-laws' graves. She placed her hand over the nearest one, Maddie’s. A smile cracked through.

“You know, they were pretty cool people, your parents. I sometimes wished they were mine. So accepting, so sympathetic, willing to go out of their way to makes sure you were safe and happy. Everything I wanted in my parents but could never see.” Her hand slid across the top of the stone as she spoke. When it reached the end, she let it droop back to her side.

“And now they’re gone.”

Danny walked up beside Sam and took her hand.

“I never thought in my life about them being gone, but Jazz and I thought it would they would probably die from something ghost-related. Just…not like this.”

“They died protecting their grandchild, who wouldn’t want to go out like that?”  

Just then, a scream echoed through the cemetery. 

“Mommy! Daddy!”

Danny and Sam turned to see Ophelia running up the hill and leap into Danny’s arms. She was trembling.  
 

“Ophelia, honey, what’s wrong?” Danny asked.

“Monster!”

Sam pulled Ophelia away as gently as she could not to irritate the scars, nonetheless the little girl winced at her mother’s touch.

“What do you mean monster? Ophelia, what are you-”

She and Danny both knew what Ophelia was crying about as soon as he walked in. Wearing the simple suits he would always wear, he walked up the hill to the graves carrying flowers. When his eyes met theirs, he smiled. It was as if he ran into some old friends.

“Daniel, Samantha,” said Vlad with well-rehearsed surprise. “What are the odds of us running into each other here?"

“What are you doing here, Vlad?” Danny demanded.

“Can I not simply pay my respects to some old friends?”

“Not when you killed them!” Sam said harshly.

Vlad smiled at her.  
“I see you still have that temper of yours.”

He looked over at Ophelia. The girl raised her head and a pair of green eyes peered through the inky curtain of hair. Once she saw Vlad, she shrunk back into her mother’s arms, nearly strangling her with the tight grip around her neck.

"So this must be the little badger I heard so much about." He reached out a hand to brush away the hair that obstructed his view of the girl's face. "Those scars must hurt, from what I have been told had happened."

Sam stepped back and pulled Ophelia away from Vlad.

 _“Don’t you dare touch my baby!”_ she hissed.

Danny stepped between them. His eyes and hands flashed green as he stared down at the man who killed his parents.

“Go any closer to them and I swear to god, you will wish the Disasteroid killed you!”

“Ah, ah, ah, Daniel,” Vlad chided with a singsong voice, wagging his finger mockingly. “One should not fight while a child is present.”

Danny said nothing; he was in no mood for the usual witty banter.   
“No need to fret over me, I shall leave you to grieve amongst yourselves once my respects are paid. I won’t be but a moment.”

He went around the Fentons before they could protest. At the headstones, Vlad placed bouquet of flowers for Maddie. For Jack, he gave a respectful glance and a fading photo in a cheap frame. 

Danny and Sam watched him warily. They could not tell if this was another act or a genuine sentiment of a mourning friend.   
“They were good people, the best I’ll ever hope to know. It’s such a shame they had to die."

He went to Sam with hands behind his back, watching Ophelia curiously.

"I heard her little accident caused her to lose her powers, is that true?"

"She hasn't been able to use them since she woke up," Sam confirmed, "The doctors fear it might be permanent."

"Pity, but I guess it's for the best. Powers like ours always come with consequences, isn't that right Daniel?"

"Go to Hell!"

Vlad put a hand to his chest pretending to be appalled.

"Daniel! Such language! And in front of your own child, for shame."

He turned back to Sam.

"You will let me know if those fears are proven false, won’t you?" He looked back at Ophelia with a smile that made the girl flinch. “I want to be the first to know when she has her powers back.”

With that, Vlad walked away towards the bottom of the hill and the exit of the cemetery. After a few feet, he stopped and turned his head back to them.

“I would be more careful if I were you, Daniel,” he said with an unnerving edge to his voice. “You have made a lot of dangerous enemies in your time. You cannot imagine what they would do to seek revenge on you.” A heinous glare was directed towards Ophelia. Midnight blue eyes flashed blood red, making the child’s blood run cold and skin lose all color.

“Some are even willing to hurt the ones you love most, no matter how innocent.”

His head turned back down the hill and disappeared in a whirl of pink smoke. Ophelia stared at the empty space, slowly shaking herself out of her terrified stupor. Sam gently pulled the child’s head to her chest, stroking her hair as she cooed reassuring words into her ear while her little girl slowly started to weep. Danny held them both, also trying to calm Ophelia down. Danny and Sam looked at each other. It was then they knew they had no other option.

They would have to leave Amity Park.

 


End file.
